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Editor’s note: Over the past several decades, few places in America have become more hostile to free speech than our universities. Yet in the wake of rising anti-Semitism and the pro-Hamas campus rallies and occupations that were sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre, university administrators seem to have had a sudden change of heart.

The Freedom Center is exposing the most egregious perpetrators of these double standards in free expression as the Top Ten Ivory Tower Hypocrites. These are universities whose leaders have permitted woke leftist activists to run roughshod over campus rules and violate codes of conduct with impunity, while failing to extend even basic free speech protections to students and faculty with opposing views. The University of California-Los Angeles is #1 on our list.

#1: University of California-Los Angeles

In the spring of 2024, as pro-Hamas protests roiled college campuses and illegal encampments led by keffiyeh-wearing radicals took over campus quads, the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) stood out as an example of supreme hypocrisy on how to handle controversial discourse on campus.

Radical student activists aided by outside agitators took over an enormous swath of campus, denying entry to “Zionists” (meaning virtually all Jews) or anyone who refused to parrot their glorification of Hamas and the beauty of the terrorist organization’s October 7^th massacre of over 1200 innocent Israelis. Students who attempted to breach the wooden and metal barricades erected to form the so-called “Palestine Soldiarity Encampment” were explicitly turned away with either words or, when the activists deemed it necessary, physical force.  Instead of ensuring equal access to all students, as is the university’s constitutional obligation, university security forces were instructed to stand by and guard the encampment.

The Amcha Initiative, a watchdog group dedicated to tracking and combatting anti-Semitism on campus, has documented some of these horrific confrontations on the public university campus and the resultant denial of freedom of speech and freedom of association. As Amcha reports:

• A Jewish counter demonstrator at the anti-Zionist encampment on campus was beaten. After her 13-year-old sister dropped her Israeli flag, the counter demonstrator bent down to pick it up and at least five kefiyah-clad protestors accosted her, first by stomping on the flag and then by knocking her to the ground, repeatedly kicking her in her head and causing her to lose consciousness and apparently suffer a concussion. When she awoke she was bleeding from her head, disoriented, and unable to recognize her family.
• According to the ADL, a Jewish individual was also harassed near the encampment by an individual who stated, “Go back to Poland.”
• A pro-Israel counter-protester was attacked by an anti-Zionist encampment protestor who attempted to rip the sign from his hand, grabbed his hat and flashed a taser.
• Also, the same day, a moving barrier of protesters was formed to block a Jewish student, who wears a Star of David necklace, from entering campus while as a security officer stood nearby. The Jewish student told protesters, “I’m a UCLA student, I deserve to go here, we pay tuition, this is our school, and they’re not letting me in. My class is over there, I want to use that entrance … will you let me go in?” The protesters simply told him that they’re “not engaging” and blocked the Jewish student every time he attempted to go through the entrance.
• Additional incidents occurred with anti-Zionist protesters affiliated with the SJP and JVP encampment blocking Zionist students from walkways and accessing the library, using wristbands to identity anti-Zionists, with many of these incidents documented on video. In one video, protestors have taken over access to an area near the school library, demanding wrist bands and approval to each student passing, with one Jewish student attempting to enter and upon being denied asking, “So you won’t let me in because I’m Jewish?” The anti-Zionist protester responses, “Ummm no… we have a couple Jewish students here… are you a Zionist?” The Jewish student responds, “Yes of course I am” to which the protester retorts, “Well yeah, we’re not gonna let Zionists in.”

Even professors were not guaranteed unfettered access to the campus. UCLA Professor Nir Hoftman, who has taught students on campus for 22 years, reported to Fox News that he was assaulted by the pro-Hamas demonstrators merely for attempting to walk across campus.  “They literally assaulted me on the way over here. I was walking to give the interview to a news station and two or three thugs tried to block my approach to the open area. I ignored them and one of them stood in front of me and said, ‘you can’t walk this way.’” One of the demonstrators then tackled him from the side and pulled his earbud from his ear before fleeing.

Campus security was present, but did not take any action to protect the professor. “The security people who were there, were watching, not doing anything,” Hoftman reported, describing the state of the campus as “anarchy, it’s like the wild, wild west.”

So deep was the protestors’ entitlement that they had the gall to blame UCLA for failing to protect them when their illegal and unconstitutional encampment was attacked by a group of pro-Zionist activists on the night of April 30, 2024.

“The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror. For over seven hours, zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, and threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment,” claimed the Encampment in a press release. “Campus safety left within minutes, external security the university hired for ‘backup’ watched, filmed, and laughed on the side as the immediate danger inflicted upon us escalated. Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help.”

The pro-Hamas faction’s illegal siege of the campus persisted for over a week before UCLA finally sent police to dismantle it—a less than permanent solution, as various attempts to re-establish it have persisted into the next school year and UCLA has taken minimal action, if any at all, against the campus occupiers and the professors who aided them in their illegal action.

UCLA’s failure to control and discipline its population of student Hamas adherents is bad enough—a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution—which is being litigated in the courts after a group of Jewish students have filed suit in federal court. But even worse is the university’s blatant hypocrisy when it comes to protecting speech that deviates from the woke progressive narrative.

In May of 2024, shortly after the police finally disbanded the initial creation of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” conservative author and JihadWatch.org director Robert Spencer was scheduled to speak at UCLA in an event organized by Young America’s Foundation. The title of his planned speech was “Everything You Know About Palestine is Wrong.”  You can probably guess what happened next.

“UCLA repeatedly ignored requests for information, withheld paperwork approvals, prevented Plaintiffs from effectively advertising in advance of the event, and engaged in other bureaucratic delay tactics,” YAF describes in a lawsuit filed against UCLA for illegally blocking a pro-Israel speaker from campus. “When that did not work, UCLA resorted to less subtle forms of censorship.”

“At the very last minute, just before the lecture was scheduled to take place, UCLA pulled a fast one: locking the doors to the event space, and claiming that the talk needed to be moved to an out-of-the way location because of purported security concerns arising from threatened counter-protest activity.”

The lawsuit filed by Young America’s Foundation “seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction prohibiting UCLA from engaging in this kind of viewpoint discrimination or bowing to a heckler’s veto as well as providing security equally without concern for the content of speech and events being protected,” a press release from the organization states. “In addition, YAF seeks a declaratory judgment that UCLA violated the First Amendment with its actions surrounding YAF’s planned lecture with Robert Spencer. The lawsuit also seeks compensatory and nominal damages along with punitive damages and attorney fees.”

“UCLA allowed its campus to be taken over by a radical anti-Israel mob, claiming that it could not do anything because the mob had a right to free speech (never mind the violence and property destruction),” describes Mountain States Legal Foundation Senior Counsel James Kerwin. “But when YAF wanted to put on a true free speech event — a peaceful lecture presenting another perspective on the Middle East conflict, UCLA changed its tune and shut the talk down.”

UCLA’s cancellation of Robert Spencer’s speech is hardly the first time the university has failed to protect free expression due to the pro-Jihad mob. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has protested a case very similar to Robert Spencer’s. In February of 2024, as FIRE describes:

UCLA’s Nazarian Center for Israel Studies planned to host the in-person lecture, “Israel and the Middle East after the October 7 Massacre: Threats, Challenges, and Hopes,” featuring former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. After UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter announced its plan to protest the event, the Nazarian Center moved the event to Zoom to “avoid any disruptions.” FIRE wrote the Nazarian Center on April 10, explaining UCLA has a constitutional duty to provide sufficient security to ensure invited speakers may safely speak without significant disruption and urging the Center not to capitulate to those who threaten to disrupt scheduled events in the future. After UCLA’s response argued that moving the event online was not a heckler’s veto because it allowed Livni’s lecture to reach a larger audience, FIRE wrote UCLA again on June 3, to explain that a move online in response to critics’ reactions limits how Livni and her faculty host may communicate messages—and still effectuates a heckler’s veto regardless of UCLA’s subjective view of the preferability of online events.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has also experienced censorship from UCLA firsthand. Back in 2015 and 2016, when the Freedom Center put up posters on the UCLA campus accusing the campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine of being “#JewHaters” and supporting terrorism—statements that have been thoroughly validated since October 7^th—UCLA’s top administrators denounced the Freedom Center as “Islamophobic” and “inflammatory” and threatened legal action for any future poster campaigns.

UCLA’s continued and abject failure to protect conservative and pro-Israel speakers and students on its campus while yielding completely to the pro-Hamas mob firmly earns it the top ranking on the list of Ivory Tower Hypocrites.

Previously in this series…

#2: Columbia University

#3: The University of Pennsylvania

#4: Georgetown University

#5: University of Louisville

#6: Wake Forest University

#7: University of Nevada-Las Vegas

#8: University of Illinois-Chicago

#9: George Mason University

#10: The University of Washington