On Monday, CSULA president William Covino officially canceled a Young Americans for Freedom-sponsored lecture set to feature Daily Wire editor-in-chief and Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Ben Shapiro. The event will proceed as planned, despite aggressive attempts at censorship; Shapiro and YAF have refused to acquiesce to the university’s Orwellian demands. At the center of the controversy lies the content of Shapiro’s speech, entitled “When Diversity Becomes a Problem.”
Shapiro has long argued that an open marketplace of ideas matters far more than artificially constructed racial, ethnic, and gender quotas, or as the Left calls it, “diversity.”
CSULA president William Covino disagrees. Disagreement is of course expected at institutions of higher learning. However, Covino’s stance is grounded in something far beyond rational and measured discourse. Covino’s vehement opposition to ideas promulgated by conservatives like Shapiro has bled over into a full-blown moral crusade.
The face of a quisling university fascist #CSULA #Covino
Tries to ban #BenShapiro
Ben will speak 2:00 pm 2/25 pic.twitter.com/nnqB5sc4px
— Shawn Steel (@shawnsteel1) February 23, 2016
For Covino, disinviting Shapiro was a religious mandate sanctified by the gospels of Leftist dogma and social justice warriorship. To understand men like Covino, self-righteous, politically-correct zealots at the highest echelons of American academia, you need to understand where they come from.
Covino is a product of the insulated habitat of bureaucratized modern academia. In a short number of years, Covino fluidly made his way through a series of well-paid, high-level positions at public universities. Here’s his Cal State University profile:
Prior to his appointment at CSULA, Covino served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Fresno State since 2009. In addition to his leadership of the university’s eight schools and colleges and oversight of academic goals and educational policy, Covino provided ongoing leadership for the Campaign for Fresno State, the university’s fundraising campaign which has raised in excess of $214 million.
Previous to his position at Fresno State, Covino held leadership positions at CSU Stanislaus and Florida Atlantic University. He also has held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Chicago and San Diego State University.
Along the way, Covino championed and embraced unsavory fellows, including regressive Communists. The Los Angeles Times reports that Covino accepted major donations from Charon D’Aiello Sandoval and David Sandoval, two former Communist activists. Here are their backgrounds, according to the Times:
D’Aiello Sandoval joined La Raza Unida, a Chicano political party, and was a member of the Young Workers Liberation League, an arm of the Communist Party. Sandoval was a Brown Beret, who traveled to the former Soviet Union and Cuba.
In 2010, as provost at Fresno State, Covino allowed students to invite Bill Ayers, the former terrorist leader of Weather Underground, a group responsible for bombing the Pentagon in 1972. Of course, ideological variety should be welcome, however extreme. But Covino seems to be partial, if not indulgent, when it comes to Leftist radicals.
For Covino, disinviting Shapiro was a religious mandate sanctified by the gospels of Leftist dogma and social justice warriorship.
Here’s a list of recent speakers Covino welcomed, without objection, onto CSULA’s stomping grounds, according to Media Research Center:
Dr. Cornel West: political activist, race-baiter, and the man who said President Obama was not progressive enough.
Alia al-Saji: Muslim activist and Feminist.
Kimberlé Crenshaw: Civil Rights professor and regular commentator on NPR’s The Tavis Smiley Show.
Serene Khader: professor specializing in global justice, feminist theory, who lectured on the topic, “Do Muslim women really need freedom?”
Angela Davis and Tim Wise (spoke together): Davis was a leader of the Communist Party USA, with close ties to Black Panther Party. Wise, who is a white man, teaches teachers and institutions how to “dismantle white racism.”
Only now that Shapiro is scheduled to speak does Covino pontificate about “inclusivity,” canceling Shapiro’s speech under the pretense of needing “ideological” Leftist counterparts to mitigate the microaggressions of Shapiro’s imminent speech. When CSULA featured a menagerie of controversial, inflammatory, uncompromising and, in some cases, asinine Leftist ideologues, Covino made no such demand. He let the show go on, the circus commence, without a single call for ideological counterbalance.