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UCLA

4 min read

UCLA appears in The Bob Zadek Show as a setting and a credential rather than as a subject of its own. The university is named in three distinct roles: as the alma mater of guests, as the employer of a law professor, and as the site of a campus controversy that one guest offers as an example of a broader cultural argument.

UCLA as a guest credential

Bob Zadek introduces Ben Shapiro as a graduate of UCLA, noting that Shapiro entered the university at the age of 16 and afterward attended Harvard Law School. The introduction serves to establish Shapiro’s background before a discussion of his book on television programming. Hollywood: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda (2011)

In a later episode Bob Zadek introduces Eugene Volokh as a law professor teaching free speech law at UCLA School of Law. Bob describes Volokh as also having been a computer scientist, as having entered college at 15, and as the creator and co-blogger of The Volokh Conspiracy, a blog sponsored by Reason magazine. Criminal Memes: The Ballad of Ricky Vaughn (2021)

A third guest, Sophia Campos, identifies herself as an undocumented student then in her fourth year at UCLA. She describes herself as a productive member of society despite her undocumented status and speaks about the effects of immigration enforcement on students and on the Latino community. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)

The 2013 classroom dispute

Mark Milke, discussing his book on what he calls the victim cult, cites UCLA in 2013 as one of several campus examples. In his account, a number of students who felt aggrieved said the classroom had become hostile and toxic and started something called the Students of Color at UCLA campus; one student said he founded it to fight “microaggressions.” Milke states that the professor involved, Val Rust, was 80 years old at the time and taught comparative education, and that he marked essays insisting on proper grammar, proper capitalization and use of the Chicago Manual of Style. According to Milke, one student objected to this, the matter went viral, and the university eventually took the student’s side and placed a monitor in the professor’s classroom. Milke characterizes the episode as an example of a student gaining power over a professor who was well-loved by most students, and he calls the administration’s response a mistake. Understanding the Victim Cult (2021)

Milke places the UCLA example alongside others: Yale in 2015 over Halloween costumes, and Evergreen State College in the case of Bret Weinstein, whom Milke describes as a left-wing professor who voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and who refused to leave campus for a day when his skin color was deemed the wrong skin color. Milke also cites Asian Americans at Harvard as actual victims of discrimination because of a preference for other minorities. His stated concern is that people are being viewed only by skin color, ethnicity or background rather than as individuals. Understanding the Victim Cult (2021)

Across episodes

UCLA is touched on in four episodes spanning 2011 to 2021, and the episodes show no development in how the topic is treated: the university functions in each case as background — a guest’s degree, a professor’s affiliation, a student’s enrollment, or a single campus incident cited in support of an argument about something else. No guest returns to UCLA as a subject, and no earlier treatment is revised or extended by a later one.

Guests and episodes

2 appearances by 2 guests, 2019–2021. Guests A–Z by first name.

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