NEW BRUNSWICK -- When Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial conservative British writer for the Breitbart News Network, spoke at Rutgers University on Tuesday about how college campuses have become too hypersensitive and politically correct, students responded by smearing their faces with fake blood in protest.

The issue of whether college campuses have become too politically correct had become a heavily debated issue in the past few years -- even at Rutgers, where former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of giving a graduating speech amid protests.

To repudiate what he sees as an increasingly reactive educational environment, where microagressions are getting in the way of substantive debate, Yiannopoulos told students that they should be going to college to "interrogate new ideas" and "experiment with dangerous ideas, new forms of knowledge, to meet new people, to introduce ourselves to new experiences, and to learn more about the world around us."

"Up against that mission," he said, according to a video of the event and witnesses there, "up against what ought to be the central purpose of higher education, what ought to be the reason you're all here, is a culture of safe spaces and trigger warnings which seeks to insulate people from anything that might traumatize or upset them."

In the video, he continued, "Of course they are not really traumatized or upset; they are just upset that someone disagrees with them. In my view, anybody who asks for a trigger warning or a safe space, should be immediately expelled."

The audience loudly applauded his statement.

He said such reactivity merely demonstrates that those students "are incapable of exposing themselves to new ideas."

"They are demonstrating that they are incapable of engaging in a humble pursuit of knowledge," he said.

At which point, a woman yells from off camera, "This man represents hatred!" They also started chanting "Black lives matter"

The video then pans to one side of the auditorium where two students appear to smear fake blood on their faces.

The evocative display was met with loud applause.

Members of the audience in support of Yiannopoulos booed and started chanting, "Trump, Trump, Trump!"

The two students eventually exited the auditorium inside Scott Hall as several other students who also smeared fake blood on their faces stood and continued the fervor.

"Safe to say a few people were triggered last night," Yiannopoulos wrote on his Twitter account, which was recently de-verified, leading to outrage among conservatives.

Yiannopoulos has come under fire, and also won support, for his statements against feminism.

One of the protesters told the Daily Targum, Rutgers' student paper, that Yiannopoulos shouldn't have been invited.

"(Rutgers groups) should not be inviting anyone like (Yiannopoulos) because what we stand for is inclusion and diversity," Nyuma Waggeh said, according to the Targum. "If a speaker makes someone feel unsafe or uncomfortable, then they should not come to campus."

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.