Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American columnist, author, conservative political commentator, media personality, attorney, and businessman. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. Shapiro writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded. 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 written 11 books.
Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Conservative Jewish family 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 graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, 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.
After graduating law school, he then worked at the law offices of Goodwin Procter, but left after 10 months. , he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.
Shapiro became interested in politics at a young age. He started a nationally syndicated column when he was 17 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.