Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (; born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator, writer and lawyer. He has written seven books, the first being 2004's Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, which he started writing when he was 17 years old.
Also at age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the country. Shapiro writes a column for Creators Syndicate, serves as editor-in-chief for The Daily Wire, which he founded, and hosts The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News between 2012 and 2016.
Video Ben Shapiro
Early life
Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California. His family is Jewish, having emigrated from Russia and Lithuania. Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and then cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2007. He then practiced law at Goodwin Procter. As of March 2012 he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.
Maps Ben Shapiro
Career
Shapiro became interested in politics at a young age. He started a nationally syndicated column when he was 17 and had written two books by age 21.
In his 2004 book Brainwashed, Shapiro argues that students are not exposed to a variety of viewpoints at universities and that those who do not have strong opinions will be overwhelmed by an atmosphere dominated by liberal instructors even if discussion is encouraged in classrooms.
In 2011, HarperCollins published Shapiro's fourth book, Primetime Propaganda The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, in which Shapiro argues that Hollywood has a left-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers of Happy Days and M*A*S*H say they pursued a pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam agenda in those series. The same year Primetime Propaganda came out, Shapiro became a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In 2013, Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.
As a columnist
In 2012, Shapiro became editor-at-large of Breitbart News, the conservative website founded by Andrew Breitbart. In March 2016, Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large of Breitbart News following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields in response to her alleged assault by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's former campaign manager. After Shapiro's departure, Breitbart published a piece saying "Ben Shapiro betrays loyal Breitbart readers in pursuit of Fox News contributorship", which Breitbart later deleted.
On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article citing unspecified Senate sources who said that a group named "Friends of Hamas" was among foreign contributors to the political campaign of Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Senator awaiting confirmation as Secretary of Defense as a nominee of President Barack Obama, but weeks later Slate reporter David Weigel reported there was no evidence such a group existed. Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had."
On October 7, 2013, Shapiro co-founded TruthRevolt, a U.S. media watchdog and activism website, in association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. TruthRevolt ceased operations in March 2018.
In July 2015, Shapiro and transgender rights activist Zoey Tur were on Dr. Drew On Call to discuss Caitlyn Jenner's receipt of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. After Shapiro repeatedly referred to Tur with male pronouns, Tur grabbed his neck and threatened on air to "send him home in an ambulance". Shapiro later announced that he had filed a police report.
Shapiro founded The Daily Wire on September 21, 2015. He is editor-in-chief as well as a host of his online political podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, broadcast every weekday. As of November 2017, the podcast was downloaded 10 million times each month. Westwood One began syndicating The Ben Shapiro Show to radio in 2018.
By 2016 he was one of the hosts for KRLA's "The Morning Answer", a conservative radio show. Internal emails showed that Shapiro faced pressure from Salem Media executives, the syndicate that owned the show, to be more supportive of Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Shapiro however remained highly critical of Trump throughout the election.
Views
Shapiro's views have been described by The New York Times as "extremely conservative". He accuses contemporary liberals of creating an imaginary "hierarchy of victimhood" and glorifying perceived victims, leading to identity politics; The Times describes this as his central talking point. He believes, as he has argued in one of his books, that the left has used its dominance of cinema and TV to push its agenda. He also believes that the election of Donald Trump was more a vote against liberals, and Hillary Clinton in particular, than in favor of Trump's brand of conservatism.
Shapiro acknowledges that climate change is occurring, but questions "what percentage of global warming is attributable to human activity", in contrast to the scientific consensus.
Shapiro believes that African-Americans were historically victims of injustice in the United States but that they are not victims of widespread systemic injustice today. As of November 2017, he supported lowering taxes on the very wealthy. He is in favor of privatizing social security, criminalizing abortion, and repealing the Affordable Care Act.
During an interview with Dan Harris of ABC's Nightline in September 2017, Shapiro said that transgenderism "is a psychological disorder. So that's not an insult to people who suffer from psychological disorders...you are not doing a service to people who are suffering from a mental disorder to humor them by suggesting that their mental disorder is reflected in objective reality." Harris went on to note that the American Psychological Association does not define being transgender as a mental illness.
During the same interview with Nightline, Shapiro strongly criticized the Alt-Right movement, stating, "It is a garbage movement composed of garbage ideas. It has nothing to do with Constitutional Conservatism".
Campus lectures
Shapiro frequently speaks at a number of college campuses across the country, often to present his conservative viewpoint on more controversial subjects. He spoke at 37 campuses between early 2016 and late 2017.
California State University, Los Angeles
On February 25, 2016, Shapiro gave a speech at California State University, Los Angeles titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem", in which he argued that the concepts of microaggressions and safe spaces were being used to suppress free speech in the name of diversity of skin color, while ignoring the value of diversity of thought. In response to the announcement of the speech, hosted by the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, student protesters labelled it "hate speech" and demanded the event be cancelled. University president William Covino eventually announced the cancellation of the speech three days before it was to take place, with the intention of rescheduling it so that the event could feature viewpoints opposed to Shapiro. Responding to the cancellation, Shapiro said he would attend the event regardless, and several lawsuits were threatened against the university for canceling the speech. Covino ultimately backed down from the cancellation, and allowed the speech to go on as planned.
The day of the speech, hundreds of student protesters formed human chains, blocking the doors to the event, shoving attendees, and starting fights in the lobby. Some attendees were ultimately smuggled into the theater through back doors, which were soon discovered by the protesters and barricaded. Shapiro eventually made it into the theater and began his speech, only for a fire alarm to be pulled by one of the protesters; Shapiro continued speaking regardless, calling Covino "cowardly" and referring to the protesters as "spoiled brat snowflakes" and "fascists". After the speech ended, Shapiro had to be escorted out a secret exit by police and his own bodyguards, while those inside the theater were told that they could not leave since the protesters were preventing anyone from leaving. Only after Shapiro left did the protesters eventually disperse, and those inside the theater were allowed to exit.
Three months after the CSULA incident, Young America's Foundation announced on May 19 that it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancellation of the event, as well as the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event, and the encouragement of such actions by several campus professors.
As a result of the free-speech lawsuit by YAF and Shapiro, the university agreed to drop what has been called "discriminatory" speech policies, and the lawsuit was settled out of court.
DePaul University
On November 15, 2016, Shapiro was invited to speak at DePaul University, at an event hosted by the school's chapters of the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom. The event also featured feminist professor Christina Hoff Sommers and had a focus on the subject of free speech on American college campuses, particularly in the wake of the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. However, partially due to a previous controversy when Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at DePaul several months prior, the university officially banned Shapiro from attending the event, as a speaker or an audience member. Shapiro vowed to appear at the event regardless. Upon his arrival, he was blocked from entering the venue by a DePaul public safety officer, who informed Shapiro that he would be arrested if he tried to enter the hall. Shapiro then called Sommers, who was speaking during the event at that moment, and informed her that he would move to another building nearby where he would be allowed to speak. Sommers and the audience subsequently moved to that building to join Shapiro.
University of California, Berkeley
On September 14, 2017, Shapiro gave a speech at the invitation of the UC (Berkeley) student organization Berkeley College Republicans where he criticized identity politics along with those who use violence to suppress contrary views, whom he characterized as fascistic. The event involved a large police presence which had been promised by Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ in her August letter that supported free speech. Together, the University and the city of Berkeley spent $600,000 on police and security for the event, which transpired with nine arrests but no major incidents.
Target of antisemitism
In May 2016 New York magazine reported: "Shapiro [...] has increasingly found himself targeted by the so-called alt-right movement, a loose conglomeration of online personalities--many if not most of them anonymous--currently devoted to tweeting and posting their support for Donald Trump and attacking those who disagree, often in racist and anti-Semitic ways. They have been denigrating Shapiro as a 'pussy,' a 'cuck,' and -- inevitably, given the nature of this movement -- a 'Jew' and a 'kike.'"
In an article in National Review, Shapiro wrote: "I've experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump's candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They've blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber."
An article in The Washington Post quoted an Anti-Defamation League report that "focused in particular on the anti-Semitic tweets aimed at journalists, frequently those whose writing about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has displeased a large contingent of Twitter users who band together to attack these journalists online. The words most commonly found in the bios of the people who post these anti-Semitic attacks [were] 'Trump,' 'nationalist,' 'conservative,' 'American' and 'white.' ... The target of the most anti-Semitic tweets, by far, was Ben Shapiro, a conservative writer who formerly worked for Breitbart and who does not support Trump."
Personal life
Shapiro has three sisters. In 2008, he married Mor Toledano, an Israeli citizen of Moroccan descent. Shapiro and his wife practice Orthodox Judaism. She is a doctor. Together, they have a daughter, born in 2014, and a son, born in 2016.
Works
- Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (ISBN 0-78526148-6). WND Books: 2004.
- Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future (ISBN 0-89526016-6). Regnery: 2005.
- Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House (ISBN 1-59555100-X). Thomas Nelson: 2008.
- Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV (ISBN 0-06209210-3). Harper Collins: 2011.
- Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America (ISBN 1-47671001-5). Threshold Editions: 2013.
- The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration (ISBN 1-47676513-8). Threshold Editions: 2014.
- A Moral Universe Torn Apart (ASIN B01I3X4ISK). Creator's Publishing: 2014.
- What's Fair and Other Short Stories (ASIN B016R28SLM). Revolutionary Publishing: 2015.
- True Allegiance (ISBN 1-68261077-2). Post Hill Press: 2016.
See also
- List of Phi Beta Kappa members by year of admission
- List of Harvard Law School alumni
- List of syndicated columnists
References
External links
- The Daily Wire
- California Bar profile
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- In Depth interview with Shapiro, September 1, 2013
- I am Ben Shapiro, AMA
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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