Exclusive Investigation: The Campus Culture Behind an Assassination Attempt

Clear Facts

• Cole Allen, the alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter, graduated from Cal State University Dominguez Hills in May 2025 with a master’s degree in computer science
• Multiple CSU Dominguez employees describe a campus environment dominated by far-left ideology, anti-Trump rhetoric, and racial division promoted by administrators
• Former university president Thomas Parham openly criticized the Trump administration, calling it racist and hostile to minorities during his tenure from 2018-2024

FIRST ON FOX: An exclusive investigation into the educational background of alleged White House Correspondents’ dinner shooter Cole Allen reveals a deeply troubling pattern of radical left-wing indoctrination at the universities he attended. The findings raise urgent questions about the role of higher education in radicalizing students against traditional American values and conservative political leadership.

Allen graduated from Cal State University Dominguez Hills in May 2025 with a Master’s Degree in computer science, according to his LinkedIn page. He spent several years at the Carson, California institution that multiple university employees describe as saturated with far-left ideology and hostile to conservative viewpoints.

I was not shocked, a CSU Dominguez employee, granted anonymity to protect against retribution, told Fox News Digital about the news that Allen was a former student at the university.

Campus policy treats ICE like it is an invading army. There is constant talk of ‘the community under threat.’ I hope no one here approves of violence, but continually talking about the government as a threat to the community isn’t healthy.

Some professors and administrators at CSUDH emphasize race and division in their teaching, and while they may not be the majority, they are highly visible and appear to be well supported, another employee said. For example, the employee explained that the university maintains three separate ethnic studies departments—Chicana/o studies, Africana studies and Asian Pacific studies—even though these programs have relatively few majors and graduates.

Despite the university facing a serious financial crisis, there are no plans to consolidate them into a single department, which could reduce costs.

Faculty who spearheaded the push for an ‘ethnic studies’ requirement in the CSU were almost uniformly rewarded with deanships and administrative positions throughout the CSU, the employee said.

Additionally, the Chicana/o Studies Department publicly supported Gaza on Nov. 3, 2023, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, but did not face any official consequences or requests to apologize, the employee said.

Conservative and independent professors and lecturers can expect scorn and insult when they try and actually voice their viewpoints, if not outright censure, one of the employees told Fox News Digital.

Conservative students can realistically expect retaliation from faculty for disagreeing with said faculty member’s political views. I’ve heard a member dismiss a rather good student as being libertarian, ‘And, therefore, he can’t be that smart.’

One of the employees suggested that regular Americans from 20 years ago likely “keep their mouths shut” in order to not be branded a “right-wing bigot.”

If you aren’t ‘anti-racist’ you are part of the problem to many of the most vocal people here. Certainly I’m not comfortable letting my views be fully known and I’m a lifelong Democrat.

One of the most prominent voices on campus during Allen’s tenure was the school’s president, who often talked about race and labeled the Trump administration as racist.

We need to be cognizant of how our minds and spirits have been contaminated by the residuals of racism and white supremacy, Thomas A. Parham, former president at Cal State University Dominguez Hills, said during a webinar last fall titled, “Liberation Psychology: Unlocking the Shackles of Conceptual Incarceration.”

Parham served as the president of CSU Dominguez Hills from March 2018 through this past December, when he stepped down after the school’s Academic Senate passed a resolution of “no confidence” over his leadership during his tenure. Parham said during the webinar that it was his goal to “disrupt” and “dislodge” individuals who feel “comfortable” with the “way things are” when it comes to race.

I want to dislodge them from that comfortable category of intellectual, emotional, and behavioral apathy that has been stuck in the way things are and then acting in the way that happens. If I need to adjust or disrupt that fragility in order to do that, that is the only thing that is going to instigate change. If I make them too comfortable, then all they do is receive information and passively go about doing it as if everything they’re doing is okay. So, I have to be one that’s unapologetic about being able to confront the fragility.

Parham also offered criticism of President Trump in the webinar, saying inflammatory and inappropriate comments about the 2016 election.

At another point in the webinar, Parham claimed the Trump administration doesn’t like minorities.

Everybody knew this current federal administration was not liking Black folk, was not liking Latino folk, and was not down with immigrants. Everybody knew that, he said.

One of the CSU Dominguez employees told Fox News Digital, “That’s Parham.”

He centered race in everything, but only in a Black-White binary despite campus being 2/3s Latino. He was defiant about not following DOE/admin rules on DEI and always made it feel like if you weren’t far-left, you didn’t share the values of the ‘Toro Family.’ A lot of professors, especially the loudest voices on campus, are the same way. I’m sure a lot of professors aren’t pushing an agenda, but the dominant narrative on campus, including from administration, that the mission of the university is race-conscious, Leftist, and activist.

On April 17, 2025, a month before Allen graduated, CSUDH faculty and staff joined a press conference and rally as part of the National Day of Action for Higher Education. This was coordinated with other Southern California campuses to protest what organizers called the Trump administration’s “attacks on higher education.”

Dr. Rick Addante, a neuroscientist who spent years working in the Cal State University system and was present during Parham’s webinar, told Fox News Digital he was “shocked and appalled at the kind of vile hate and discrimination that he was spewing.” He made the case that the political climate at CSU Dominguez was one that could easily radicalize an impressionable student.

Addante, who has been sounding the alarm on social media over alleged liberal radicalization on college campuses over the last few years, argues that the rhetoric found in the shooter’s manifesto is indistinguishable from the official “ideological breeding ground” established by Parham. He believes the shooter was “indoctrinated” by an institutional culture that explicitly targets the Trump administration and its supporters.

When you look at that, and you ask yourself, why is this person willing to run through a gauntlet of Secret Service people to attack the entire line of succession of the United States government and the President of the United States, where do his ideas, where do his thoughts and this drive come from? Well, to me, you can draw a straight line connecting the two dots because this is clearly what he was indoctrinated with.

As far as I’m concerned, they should be yanking funding from all of these places and treating them like the madrasas for the terror breeding grounds that they are, Addante added.

Beginning in March 2020, Allen’s LinkedIn profile says, he joined C2 Education, a tutoring company, enrolling at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2022 to pursue an MS in computer science, graduating in May 2025. A Dec. 30, 2024, Facebook post from C2 Education congratulated “Cole Allen of C2 Education Torrence on being honored as December teacher of the month.”

According to law enforcement officials, Allen’s past includes descending into anti-Trump hatred, attending at least one of the three “No Kings” protests organized over the past year by groups including Democratic-leaning nonprofits, like Indivisible, MoveOn and American Federation of Teachers, and a network of socialist organizations.

In the days following the shooting authorities say was carried out by Allen, social media users began pointing to his educational background and his leftist commentary on social media, while highlighting the allegations in recent years that the education system in the United States has been increasingly promoting and funding far-left ideologies.

If you’re surprised that the wannabe Trump assassin is a teacher, you haven’t been paying attention, political commentator Riley Gaines posted on social media Monday in response to a report highlighting the over $1 billion teachers’ unions have sent to far left causes over the last decade.

The elephant in the room is that a left wing teacher just tried to assassinate multiple members of the Trump administration after teachers unions spent more than $1 billion on left-wing causes, Republican communicator Steve Guest posted in response to the same report.

In addition to attending CSU Dominguez, in September 2013, according to his online profile, Allen enrolled in the highly competitive California Institute of Technology, known as Caltech, to pursue a BS in mechanical engineering, graduating in 2017.

Caltech has had its own issues with perceptions of far-left curriculum and ideology, highlighted most notably by a National Association of Scholars report that concluded DEI, widely viewed by conservative critics as a key tenet of far-left ideology on college campuses, is not just administrative at Caltech—it’s inserted into scientific research culture itself. The report explains that “Caltech’s administration is thoroughly saturated with DEI’s broader ideological agenda” and that “DEI was established to operate at every level of campus work.”

DEI was also a top priority of Parham during his tenure at CSU Dominguez, according to his own words in an exit interview where he took a shot at the Trump administration’s efforts to rein back race-based hiring and curriculum.

We are acutely aware of the federal government’s hostility toward anything that looks like it wants to be diverse. Not a surprise to us, but we try to delicately dance, not to skirt the law, but really to be in tune with the law as it is written, and separate out what is someone’s opinion and perspective about what they like and don’t like, versus technically what is legal.

In the same interview, Parham expressed his reverence for anti-colonialist writer and activist Frantz Fanon, a French political philosopher who died in 1961, who was labeled the “Patron Saint of Political Violence” by The Atlantic in 2024.

In his farewell email to the university, obtained by Fox News Digital, Parham said he hoped his “lasting legacy” was his “commitment” to DEI measures. CSUDH’s interim president, Mary Ann Villarreal, appears to have made racial “equity” a key part of her resume as well, joining the university after serving as “vice president for institutional excellence at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, a global membership organization dedicated to advancing equity, innovation, and educational excellence,” according to her bio.

Before that, Villarreal served as the vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion.

I am excited to join CSUDH in advancing its vital mission of serving California students in all their diversity and promise. Dominguez Hills is a beacon of inclusivity and a vital anchor for its community, Villarreal said after her appointment in a press release on the school website.

A spokesperson for CSU Dominguez pointed Fox News Digital to their previous statement on April 27 that said, “CSUDH reiterates its condemnation for the act of violence at the WHCA dinner. The university community is grateful for law enforcement’s swift response and greatly relieved that no one was seriously injured.”

In response to questions about the climate on campus, the spokesperson said the university is “committed to creating a safe, healthy environment” and upholds First Amendment principles. The statement continued that the university “cannot and will not intervene in individual expression unless it violates the law.”

A Caltech spokesperson told Fox News Digital the shooting incident is “deeply troubling” and that “we unequivocally denounce all forms of political violence and extend our concern and support to all those impacted by this incident.”

Caltech is firmly committed to—and solely focused on—advancing knowledge; promoting critical, data-driven inquiry; and providing the next generation of scientists and engineers with access to research and learning experiences that drive discovery, innovation, and technological advancement.

Nicole Neily, president of the education watchdog Defending Education, pointed to a 2024 report her organization released highlighting the “activist pipeline” on college campuses.

Colleges of education have strayed far from their mission of providing best practices and tactics for teachers, instead focusing on leveraging pupils to combat a so-called ‘oppressor-oppressed matrix.’ For far too long, teachers have viewed their role as ‘agents of social change’ rather than of educators – and the results of this sea change are obvious when looking at test scores. America’s students deserve to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic – not be enlisted as child soldiers in progressives’ war on our country’s values.

Skeptic Research Center, a project of The Skeptics Society, released a study in 2025 suggesting a correlation between a high level of education and being more open to supporting political violence.

Americans with the highest level of formal education were also the most supportive of political violence, the study stated, adding, “Thirty-six percent of those with a graduate or professional degree agreed at least somewhat with the statement ‘If you are protesting something unjust, it is reasonable to damage property,’ while 40 percent agreed that ‘Violence is often necessary to create social change.'”

Addante told Fox News Digital that Saturday’s shooting should be a wakeup call to the threat of radical ideology on college campuses nationwide.

Where did the manifesto come from? Where did the ideas that drove the manifesto and the actions and the threats, where did they come from? They didn’t come from Reddit, they didn’t come from social media. They might have been exacerbated by Reddit and social media and Bluesky, and sure, blame them too. But we’re not going to solve anything by blaming BlueSky and Reddit. We’re going to solve things by addressing the root cause, which is actually the ideological breeding grounds and where he was trained to think this way by the actual employed people receiving federal funds who specifically spent four years, five years teaching him literally this. That is what we’re not doing as a country in focusing and that’s why it’s going to continue to happen over and over again because there are a thousand of these institutions around America.

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