Ben Shapiro facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ben Shapiro
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Shapiro in 2024
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| Born |
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro
January 15, 1984 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| Education | University of California, Los Angeles (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
| Occupation |
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| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) |
Mor Toledano
(m. 2008) |
| Children | 4 |
| Relatives | Mara Wilson (cousin) |
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Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator, media proprietor, and attorney. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has also authored sixteen non-fiction books.
Contents
Early life and education
Shapiro was born on January 15, 1984 in Los Angeles, California, to a Conservative Jewish family. He is Ashkenazi Jewish, of Russian-Jewish and Lithuanian-Jewish ancestry. When he was 9 years old, his family transitioned to Orthodox Judaism. He started playing violin at a young age and performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at 12 years of age. His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was a TV company executive, and his father, David Shapiro, worked as a composer.
Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He then attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2004 at age 20 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in political science and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Afterwards, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2007 with a J.D., cum laude.
Career
Law
After graduating from law school, Shapiro entered private practice at the law firm Goodwin Procter, but left after 10 months. As of March 2012[update], he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.
Author
Shapiro became interested in politics at a young age. He started a nationally syndicated column when he was 17, becoming the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States, and had written two books by age 21.
In his first book Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (2004), Shapiro argues that the American Left has ideological dominance over universities and that professors do not tolerate non-left opinions.
In 2011, HarperCollins published Shapiro's fourth book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, in which Shapiro argues that Hollywood has a left-wing agenda that it actively promotes through prime-time entertainment programming. In the book, the producers of Happy Days and M*A*S*H say they pursued a pro-pacifist, anti-Vietnam-War agenda in those series. Shapiro also became a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In 2013, Threshold Editions published Shapiro's fifth book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.
In 2017, he released his first and to date only fiction novel, True Allegiance.
In 2019, Shapiro published the book The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, which focuses on the importance of "Judeo-Christian values" and laments the decline of those values in modern America.
In 2021, Shapiro published the book The Authoritarian Moment, which argues that there is not a pressing authoritarian threat in U.S. politics from the right-wing. Rather, he argues that the authoritarian threat comes from the left's control of academia, Hollywood, journalism, and corporate America.
Breitbart News
In 2012, Shapiro became editor-at-large of Breitbart News, a website founded by Andrew Breitbart. After Breitbart came under the leadership of Steve Bannon, Shapiro attempted to distance himself from him.
On February 7, 2013, Shapiro published an article citing unspecified Senate sources who said that a group named "Friends of Hamas" was among foreign contributors to the political campaign of Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Senator awaiting confirmation as Secretary of Defense as a nominee of President Barack Obama, but weeks later Slate reporter David Weigel reported there was no evidence such a group existed. Shapiro told Weigel that the story he published was "the entirety of the information [he] had." Shapiro later expressed regret over publishing the story.
In March 2016, Shapiro resigned from his position as editor-at-large of Breitbart News following what he characterized as the website's lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields in response to her alleged assault by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, in spite of video and eyewitness evidence of the assault. In his resignation statement, Shapiro stated, "Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out [the late Breitbart.com founder] Andrew Breitbart's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda". After Shapiro's departure, Breitbart published a piece, falsely attributed to Shapiro's father's pseudonym, saying, "Ben Shapiro betrays loyal Breitbart readers in pursuit of Fox News contributorship," which Breitbart later deleted.
Host
In 2012, Shapiro joined KRLA-AM 870 as a host on their morning radio program alongside Heidi Harris and Brian Whitman. By 2016, he was one of the hosts for KRLA's The Morning Answer, a conservative radio show. Internal emails showed that Shapiro faced pressure from Salem Media executives, the syndicate that owned the show, to be more supportive of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Shapiro, however, remained highly critical of Trump throughout the election.
Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing founded The Daily Wire on September 21, 2015. He serves as editor emeritus as well as the host of his online political podcast The Ben Shapiro Show, broadcast every weekday. As of March 2019[update], the podcast was ranked by Podtrac as the second most popular podcast in the U.S. Westwood One began syndicating The Ben Shapiro Show podcast to radio in April 2018. In 2018, Politico described the podcast as "massively popular". In January 2019, Westwood One expanded Shapiro's one-hour podcast-to-radio program, adding a nationally syndicated two-hour live radio show, for three hours of Ben Shapiro programming daily. As of March 2019, according to Westwood One, The Ben Shapiro Show is being carried by more than 200 stations, including in nine of the top ten markets. In June 2020, Shapiro stepped down from his role as editor-in-chief, which he had held since the site's founding, and took on the role of editor emeritus.
In September 2018, Shapiro started hosting The Ben Shapiro Election Special on Fox News. The limited-run series covered news and issues relating to the 2018 midterm elections.
Shapiro has made frequent appearances on PragerU with talks on intersectionality and Hollywood with 4,900,000 to 8,400,000 views as of December 2018[update].
In 2021, Ben Shapiro's podcast was ranked as the 9th most listened on Apple podcasts.
Speaker
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Shapiro speaks at college campuses across the United States. In his speeches, he often presents a conservative viewpoint on controversial subjects. He spoke at 37 campuses between early 2016 and late 2017.
Some students and faculty members at California State University, Los Angeles objected to a speech that Shapiro, who was then an editor at Breitbart News, was scheduled to hold at the university on February 25, 2016, titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem". University president William Covino canceled the speech three days before it was to take place, with the intention of rescheduling it so that the event could feature various viewpoints on the subject of campus diversity. Covino ultimately reversed his decision, allowing the speech to go on as planned. The day of the speech, student protesters formed human chains, blocking the doors to the event and staging sit-in protests. When Shapiro began his speech, a protester pulled the fire alarm. After the speech ended, Shapiro was escorted out by campus police. Conservative youth organization Young America's Foundation (YAF) announced it was filing a lawsuit against the university (with Shapiro as one of the plaintiffs), claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students were violated by Covino's attempted cancellation of the event as well as by the physical barricading of students from entering or leaving the event.
In August 2016, DePaul University revoked an invitation for Shapiro to address students at the school and barred him from entering the campus owing to "security concerns".
On September 14, 2017, Shapiro gave a speech at the invitation of the University of California, Berkeley student organization Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) in which he criticized identity politics. The event was supported by the YAF and BCR. It involved a large police presence, which had been promised by Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ in her August letter that supported free speech. Together, the university and the city of Berkeley spent $600,000 (equivalent to $716,318 in 2022) on police and security for the event.
Other media activities
On October 7, 2013, Shapiro and business partner Jeremy Boreing co-founded the U.S. media criticism website TruthRevolt with funding from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. TruthRevolt ceased operations in March 2018.
On January 14, 2021, Shapiro was featured as a guest writer for Politico's Playbook newsletter, where he defended House Republicans who opposed the second impeachment of Donald Trump. The newsletter drew immense backlash from many Politico staffers, some of whom argued that Shapiro should not have been allowed to write the article. Matthew Kaminski, editor-in-chief of Politico, refused to apologize and defended the decision to allow Shapiro to write the article, stating that, "We're not going to back away from having published something because some people think it was a mistake to do so." According to the Daily Beast, more than 100 Politico staffers signed on to a letter to publisher Robert Allbritton criticizing both Politico's decision to feature Shapiro's article and the response from Kaminski.
Shapiro cameoed in The Daily Wire film, Lady Ballers, that was released December 1, 2023. He portrayed a referee.
On January 26, 2024, he appeared alongside artist Tom MacDonald in the music video for MacDonald's rap song "Facts", which Shapiro is featured on. The song held the No. 1 spot on iTunes Music in late January & early February 2024. On February 5, 2024, the song debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Views
Personal life
In 2008, Shapiro married Mor Toledano, an Israeli medical doctor of Moroccan descent, and they lived in Los Angeles. The couple has two daughters and two sons. They practice Orthodox Judaism.
In September 2020, Shapiro announced that he and his family were leaving California. While he relocated the headquarters of his Daily Wire enterprise to Nashville, Tennessee, he and his family resettled in Florida.
Shapiro's sister, Abigail Shapiro, who studied operatic singing, is a conservative media influencer who posts videos on her YouTube channel "Classically Abby". She has been subjected to online antisemitic trolling due to her brother's high public profile.
Shapiro is a cousin of Mara Wilson.
See also
- Intellectual dark web, a loose collection of public personalities of which Shapiro is often cited as an example
- List of American conservatives
- List of Harvard Law School alumni
- List of Phi Beta Kappa members by year of admission
- List of syndicated columnists
- Owning the libs
