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DePaul Bans Conservative Speaker Ben Shapiro From Campus

By Mina Bloom | August 2, 2016 12:21pm
 Ben Shapiro (left), a conservative commentator, was banned from speaking at DePaul University.
Ben Shapiro (left), a conservative commentator, was banned from speaking at DePaul University.
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Courtesy/Facebook

LINCOLN PARK — DePaul University has banned conservative commentator Ben Shapiro from giving a speech at the school, citing security concerns.

"DePaul University’s Office of Public Safety determined, after observing events which took place when Mr. Shapiro spoke elsewhere, that it was not in a position to provide the type of security that would be required to properly host this event at this time," a university statement reads.

It comes just a few months after a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor for the conservative website Breitbart, sparked protests at the university between student activists, many of them affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, and Yiannopoulos supporters.

The activists stormed the stage, grabbed the microphone and cut the talk short. Throughout the chaos, security did not intervene. 

Racial tensions exploded: University officials found a noose on campus, as well as graffiti that read, "Trump 2016 and F*** Mexico." The student activist who led the protests received so many racist threats via social media that he had to temporarily deactivate his account.

Shapiro was a colleague of Yiannopoulos when he was the editor-at-large for Breitbart. But he left after denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (he's a Ted Cruz supporter). Now he's the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, another conservative website. 

Like Yiannopoulos, Shapiro has been known to spark protests on college campuses for his staunch conservatism. There are dozens of clips on YouTube of Shapiro slamming the Black Lives Matter movement, the Obama administration and Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton, to name a few.

Yiannopoulos, whose anti-feminist stance sparked the DePaul protests, issued the following statement in response to Shapiro getting banned from DePaul:

"It’s sweet that Ben is following me around the US, desperately trying to get banned from the same schools that have banned me. (Setting trends is the cross I bear.) But he keeps coming up short, the poor thing! I was banned from DePaul WEEKS ago, dahhhling. The cool people are getting banned from UC Irvine now -- a school which just told me they won’t consider my return to campus when my smash hit Dangerous Faggot tour starts again in September.”

Carol Hughes, spokeswoman for DePaul, said there was no set date for Shapiro's appearance — only a request that was denied for the reason provided in the statement. 

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