College prez offers ‘healing space’ after conservative star visits

(Photo: California State University, Los Angeles)

Ben Shapiro

Apparently conservative ideas have left students at a California college “feeling traumatized, feeling brutalized – physically, emotionally and mentally,” so to help soothe the offended students, the president held a “healing space” meeting.

William Covino, the president of California State University, Los Angeles, held the meeting on May 17 after an on-campus lecture by conservative Ben Shapiro. During the meeting, Covino discussed with faculty members how the school could stop such speakers from visiting in the future.

“I would have never invited anybody like Ben Shapiro on campus. Never,” Covino said in a video of the meeting released Thursday by the Young America’s Foundation. “He was invited by students, he was funded by students, he was supported by students. I would have never invited anybody like Ben Shapiro.”

Watch the video of the meeting: 

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

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Then professor Melinda Abdullah – chair of the Pan-African Studies department – chimed in.

“This is kind of this ongoing conversation about the specificity of anti-blackness, and that’s I think what we see with Ben Shapiro,” she said.

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

Then Abdullah called Shapiro a “neo-Nazi.”

“I get he’s Jewish, so that’s ironic that I’m calling him a neo-Nazi,” she said. “But that’s basically what he is, the equivalent. A neo-KKK member — let’s call him that.

“Students come into my office feeling traumatized, feeling brutalized — physically, emotionally and mentally,” Abdullah said.

Concerned individuals may contact California State University, Los Angeles, President William Covino here.

Then Covino said the college should implement “a kind of policy or process or set of criteria” that invited guests must meet if they will be allowed to speak at the school.

“I’m convinced there will be a next time,” he said. “Very tragically and unfortunately, we’re in a kind of climate nationally and locally in which this kind of provocation is occurring.”

As WND reported, a lawsuit has been filed against the university because a mob tried to prevent Shapiro from speaking in February. The conservative commentator and author spoke despite protesters setting off a fire alarm and barricading the from door to the auditorium, forcing attendees to use a back door.

See a short video:

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At the time, Shapiro cited one of the university’s sociology professors, Robert Weide, who earlier had called YAF students “white supremacists” and invited them to fight him.

The Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit against school officials “challenging the unconstitutional policies and practices of the university.”

Shapiro’s speech, “When Diversity Becomes a Problem,” was supposed to be part of a free-speech event organized by Young America’s Foundation.

“University officials first attempted to shut down the event,” ADF explained. “When those efforts failed, professors helped incite a mob of protesters to block entry to the venue.”

“The cornerstone of higher education is the ability of students to participate in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ on campus,” ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer said.

“Instead, student groups and Mr. Shapiro encountered systematic and violent opposition to a free speech event promoting diversity of opinion. When public universities discriminate against points of view they don’t like, they violate both the First Amendment and a core purpose behind their own existence. This type of viewpoint discrimination cannot and will not stand.”

The complaint explains CSU-LA officials called Shapiro “controversial” and charged the students $621.50 for security. Then, William Covina, school president, sent YAF an email canceling the event and imposing his own plan for a “more inclusive event” later in which Shapiro could appear “as part of a group of speakers with differing viewpoints on diversity.”

But YAF held its event anyway – only to be confronted by “hundreds of protesters – aided by professors and faculty of the university.”

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

In an interview with the Blaze, Shapiro reacted to the comments made in the “healing space” meeting.

“It seemed more like brutality when students were being assaulted and hustled into my lecture two at a time through back entrances, when I required a phalanx of cops just to get on and off campus, and when the students were trapped in a room for fear of violence just for wanting to hear me speak,” he told the news site.

“The video just demonstrates that the left will slander conservatives without evidence, then use that slander as the basis for censorship,” he said. “I pay these people with my tax dollars.”

The Blaze noted that Abdullah’s Pan-African Studies department had hosted an event Wednesday featuring Angela Davis, an ex-convict and 1960s Communist Party USA leader.

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