Conservative Students Claim UCLA Blocked Pro-Israel Event

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) blocked a pro-Israel event from happening on Wednesday, according to the conservative student group hosting the event.

The student group, UCLA’s Young America’s Foundation (YAF) chapter, accused the university of caving to pressure from “pro-Hamas campus radicals” who have engaged in “violent” protests and encampments for weeks.

The event was slated to begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. The featured speaker was author and counter-Jihad expert Robert Spencer.

However, before the event was scheduled to begin, the YAF team discovered that the doors to the event room were locked, they said.

When they contacted university officials, they were informed that their event would need to be relocated to a low-traffic, remote location, the student group said. This was an “unacceptable last minute change that would have significantly impacted the event’s attendance and impact,” YAF said in a post about the incident.

Administrators allegedly refused to open the locked doors, preventing the event from taking place.

In the weeks prior, UCLA administrators also allegedly stalled the event’s approval process, according to the student group. Administrators told the group that if the pro-Palestinian encampment was still in place on the day of the event, it would be too dangerous for an event expressing opposing views to happen, the group said.

The student group brought in legal counsel and contested that decision, arguing that it was an unconstitutional use of the heckler’s veto. At first, the university appeared to reconsider, but in the end, the event was stifled, the group said.

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“The move is also a clear violation of students’ constitutional rights,” YAF said in its post.

UCLA said it was “misinformation” that the event was canceled.

“The event took place in the designated location after it shifted to a closed, recorded event as proposed by the organizer and agreed to by UCLA,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor of strategic communications at UCLA, said in a statement to The Daily Wire.

YAF pushed back on the university’s characterization, saying the event never took place.

“The statement from UCLA is not correct. To be clear, our event did not take place,” YAF told The Daily Wire.

YAF’s president, former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, warned that YAF is prepared to take UCLA to court over the issue.

“Conservative students should have the same rights as the pro-Hamas students who have routinely obstructed and violently disrupted the UCLA campus,” Walker said in a statement to The Daily Wire.

“UCLA canceled YAF’s access to the lecture hall while allowing protestors to freely roam the campus. Like we did against UC, Berkeley, YAF will prevail against UCLA in court!” Walker said.

The student chairman of UCLA’s YAF chapter, Matthew Weinberg, expressed disappointment at the university’s move.

“I am deeply disappointed in UCLA’s failure to protect our First Amendment rights,” Weinberg said. “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 hear a different perspective not heard across university campuses, and the school made that impossible. This is nothing but an act of pure cowardice.”

Spencer, the event’s speaker, had strong words for the school, accusing it of indoctrinating students with leftist ideology.

“UCLA and other universities today are not institutions of higher learning; they are radioactive wastelands of hard-left indoctrination,” Spencer said.