UPDATED 10:40am MT

The University of Utah emailed students with a “safety update” advising the campus community that “much of the surrounding area [around the venue Shapiro will speak in] will be blocked off, and faculty have had the option of relocating their classes to other buildings.”

Sources tell Young America’s Foundation that such action has never been taken before, highlighting the escalating intolerance of leftists who seek to shut down conservative speech with their fascist tactics. The coddled leftists who are unable to handle opinions contrary to their own should behave as adults, not lash out in violence that causes universities to take unprecedented action to preserve the rule of law and allow First Amendment activities to take place.


Radical leftist groups at the University of Utah and in the Salt Lake City area have doubled down on their fascist plans to “shut down” conservative speech.

“We have no shame in saying that we intend to shut down Ben Shapiro,” states a letter published Tuesday in the Salt Lake Tribune signed by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Utah, Black Lives Matter – Salt Lake City, and University of Utah Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán.

This letter comes after posters were hung declaring “F**K BEN SHAPIRO” and “SHUT DOWN BEN SHAPIRO” and in the wake of protests of university administrators.

Clearly these leftists don’t understand that the First Amendment freedom they enjoy as they’ve protested Shapiro’s appearance don’t give them the right to shut down speech they disagree with, but instead guarantees that Ben Shapiro and the students in the University of Utah Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter can voice conservative ideas.

The leftist rant continues by saying “To pretend that Shapiro does not spew racist and transphobic pseudoscience with the desire to justify and encourage violence is idealistic, ahistorical and wrong.”

Young America’s Foundation hopes the leftists issuing these censorious threats abide by their statement that their opposition “will not be violent,” but we also hope they’ll see that the same First Amendment that guarantees their right to peacefully protest also gives Shapiro the right to share his ideas, however objectionable their fragile existences find it to be.

Follow @YAF on Twitter throughout the day on Wednesday for live updates from the University of Utah campus.


For further information or to cover YAF’s lecture with Ben Shapiro at the University of Utah, contact Spencer Brown via email (sbrown@yaf.org) or phone (800-872-1776).