Conservative speaker Ben Shapiro to visit University of Michigan

The University of Michigan's Young Americans for Freedom chapter will host well-known conservative speaker and writer Ben Shapiro on March 12.

The event will run from 7 p.m.-8 p.m. at Rackham Auditorium on campus. Ticket information is to be announced at a later date, the YAF chapter said.

"This event provides a great opportunity for conservatives and liberals alike to hear a perspective they’re typically not exposed to on campus," said U-M YAF spokeswoman Kate Westa. "Young Americans for Freedom seeks to bring conservative speakers to university students so that intellectual diversity can be a reality at U of M. With the success of our events with Steven Crowder and Michael Knowles last semester, we are excited to host the top conservative speaker of our day, Ben Shapiro, on March 12."

Shapiro is editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," the top conservative podcast in the nation and now a nationally syndicated radio show. Shapiro is the author of seven nonfiction books, and his newest work — “The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great” — will be released on March 19. He earned a B.A. in political science from UCLA in 2004 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007.

Shapiro spoke at U-M in 2016 and drew about 300 people to his lecture, according to the Michigan Daily.

"You can not like what I say, but that doesn’t give you the right to put your hands on me,” he said at that event, according to the Michigan Daily. “All of this creates a very dangerous world. The Left is taking a battering ram to those two fundamental bases of Western civilization: You are responsible for your own actions and in a free society you can say things without people assaulting you.”

Conservative students at U-M have long said they feel marginalized at the school.

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In 2016, several hundred signed an online petition and detailed their experiences of being conservative at the school.

In 2017, U-M President Mark Schlissel came under fire when emails were released in which he wrote he would "feel awful" if Donald Trump were elected president and said conservative students feeling shunned was "ironic."

Later that fall, conservative speaker Charles Murray drew protesters when he was hosted by the U-M College Republicans chapter and the American Enterprise Institute University of Michigan Executive Council for a speech and question-and-answer period. Protesters jumped up on stage, turned off the lights in the room and heckled Murray.

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj.