FIRST ON FOX: The educational background of the alleged White House Correspondents’ dinner Correspondents dinner shooter Cole Allen is generating renewed scrutiny from critics about the current state of academia and bias in the teaching profession, as well as questions about far-left politics and rhetoric on college campuses, including the specific institutions the alleged shooter attended.
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 a few years at the Carson, California, institution that multiple university employees who spoke to Fox News Digital said is rife with far-left ideology and antipathy toward countering views to that.
“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.”
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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.’”
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One of the employees suggested that “regular folks 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, 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,” first reported by Gateway Pundit.
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,’ Parham explained in the webinar, which was hosted by the American Psychological Association (APA) Leadership Development Institute.
“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 Trump in the webinar, saying, “When you can brag about grabbing women by the privates, that is sexual assault that would wind everybody else up in jail. And 53% of the women still vote for you. Mostly White. You know this is something more than just a political issue.”
At another point in the webinar, Parham claimed the Trump administration doesn’t like minorities, saying, “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.”
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,” the employee said. “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.”
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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, which he posted online, told Fox News Digital he was “shocked and appalled at the kind of vile hate and discrimination that he [Parham] was spewing,” and 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 X over alleged liberal radicalization on college campuses over the last few years after being fired from Florida Tech after blowing the whistle on DEI, 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?” Addante said. “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. That school also confirmed that a person by the same name graduated with a master’s degree that year.
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.” A photo matching that of Allen was attached to the post.
According to law enforcement officials, Allen’s past includes descending into anti-Trump hate, 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 high-profile 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 X on Monday in response to a Fox News Digital 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 on X 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.
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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,” Parham said. “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.
“They become mantras and symbols of possibility. When I see Fannie Lou Hamer talking about — I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired — it sometimes creates the mood and the ambiance that allows me to kind of move forward,” Parham said when asked about the “black intellectuals” that are “meaningful in his life.” “When I see Fanon, which is kind of my daily mantra, say that Each generation, out of relative obscurity, must reach out and seek to fulfill its legacy or betray it — I go to work every day and go to bed every night deciding, have I fulfilled or betrayed the legacy that I’ve been blessed to inherit by my ancestors and my elders?”
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.
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“I am excited to join CSUDH in advancing its vital mission of serving California students in all their diversity and promise,” Villarreal said after her appointment in a press release on the school website. “Dominguez Hills is a beacon of inclusivity and a vital anchor for its community.”
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, “CSUDH is committed to creating a safe, healthy environment in which our campus community can thrive and exchange ideas. Our mission is to provide a transformative educational experience that helps students in their academic and career journeys.”
The statement continued, “CSUDH upholds the tenets of the First Amendment: our staff, faculty, and students, each of whom has their own perspectives and life experiences, are free to engage in dialogue and debate. No one is discouraged from speaking their mind, and the university cannot and will not intervene in individual expression unless it violates the law. CSUDH urges anyone experiencing retaliation or harassment to make a report so that the university can respond appropriately and provide any necessary supports.”
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.”
The spokesperson also pointed to reporting on community members and classmates who have said Allen was actively involved with the Caltech Christian Fellowship club and fencing during his time at Caltech.
Nicole Neily, president of the education watchdog Defending Education, pointed to a 2024 report her organization released highlighting the “activist pipeline” on college campuses.
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“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,’” Neily said.
“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,” Addante said.
“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 five — 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.”
Fox News Digital’s Peter D’Abrosca and Asra Q. Nomani contributed to this report.
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