UCLA allegedly forces cancellation of pro-Israel, anti-Jihad YAF event

The University of California, Los Angeles has been accused of preventing a conservative author from speaking at a Young America’s Foundation (YAF) event on campus last month.

On May 15, the UCLA YAF chapter was set to host Robert Spencer, the founder of Jihad Watch, at the UCLA Bruin Viewpoint Room, as seen from YAF’s Instagram. The event was entitled: “Why Everything You Know About Palestine is Wrong.” 

[RELATED: Threatening legal action, YAF forces UW–La Crosse to remove mandated DEI statements]

A project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch is a website “dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts.”

In its Instagram post about the event, YAF wrote: “Unfortunately, @ucla has stifled our First Amendment rights and earlier today cancelled our speaker event tonight with Robert Spencer.”

YAF further claimed in a press release that the school canceled the event after coming “[u]nder mounting pressure from pro-Hamas campus radicals who have been staging violent protests and encampments for weeks.” 

“Young America’s Foundation speaker and counter-Jihad expert Robert Spencer was scheduled to take the stage at 6:00 PM. However, the YAF advance team discovered that the doors of the Bruin Viewpoint Room were locked. After contacting university officials, YAF was informed that the event would need to be moved to a low-traffic, remote location–an unacceptable last minute change that would have significantly impacted the event’s attendance and impact,” the conservative organization noted. 

This incident occurred after “UCLA administrators have stalled the approval process in a clear attempt to ensure the event would not happen,” YAF alleged. 

Matthew Weinberg, Chairman of the YAF chapter at UCLA, stated: “I am deeply disappointed in UCLA’s failure to protect our First Amendment rights. All we wanted was a successful Pro-Israel event where people of all backgrounds and viewpoints can engage in the free exchange of ideas and here a different perspective not heard across university campuses, and the school made that impossible.” 

”This is nothing but an act of pure cowardice,” he concluded.

Commenting on the cancellation, Spencer said: “UCLA and other universities today are not institutions of higher learning; they are radioactive wastelands of hard-left indoctrination,” according to the press release.

[RELATED: YAF beats UW Madison attempt to cancel Michael Knowles event by charging exorbitant security fees] 

Following the event, the President of YAF, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, wrote on X: “At @UCLA radical protesters are allowed on campus but not civil students listening to a @yaf speaker in a room that was appropriately reserved in advance. This is a violation of their Constitutional rights. We beat the UC System before & will again. See you in court!”

Campus Reform has reached out to UCLA for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.