Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University Los Angeles, stood in front of an audience in Los Angeles over the weekend and gave them the name, agency, and hotel location of a federal law enforcement officer. Then she told them what to do with it.
"You see the devil right there, f*ck him up."
The event was called "La Defensa del Pueblo: A Summit to End the Terror Against the People." Abdullah, who co-founded the LA chapter of Black Lives Matter, and was Cornel West's running mate during his 2024 third-party presidential campaign — named ICE agent Brian Palacios from the stage. She told the crowd, "The killer ICE agent, who we've got on good authority is right down the road … his name is Brian Palacios."
Then she gave them his hotel address.
Video of the moment went viral after Stu Smith, an investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, posted a clip to X. Smith wrote that "you can argue about the legal threshold. It is much harder to argue that this sequence would not reasonably be understood as putting a specific person in danger."
Abdullah later attempted the standard cleanup. "When I say 'fuck him up,' I mean in many ways," she said, adding that people should "shine a light on their mother f*cking ass." The walk-back came after naming a specific federal agent, disclosing where he was staying, and telling a crowd of activists to go after him. The clarification was not particularly clarifying.
Palacios is under investigation by federal authorities over a New Year's Eve shooting in which he shot and killed a man while off duty. Federal authorities stated Palacios was responding to a suspected active shooter, and his attorney has claimed self-defense. The case is ongoing.
Abdullah has decided he's guilty enough for her to call for vigilante justice. In her eyes Palacios is NOT entitled to due process — the thing universities supposedly champion.
Abdullah's history makes the pattern obvious. She once called Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, a "neo-Nazi" and "neo-KKK member" at a 2017 intersectionality conference. Her faculty bio describes her as a "womanist scholar-activist." Cal State LA has so far responded with a statement saying it "is aware of comments attributed to a faculty member at an off-campus event" and that "the university respects free speech, including speech with which the university strongly disagrees."
Free speech. A professor disclosed the physical location of a federal law enforcement officer and instructed a crowd to physically confront him, and the university filed it under "speech with which the university strongly disagrees." That's the bucket they chose. Not incitement. Not a referral to law enforcement. A polite disagreement.
Imagine a conservative professor naming an FBI agent from a stage, giving out his hotel, and telling a MAGA crowd to "f*ck him up." The arrest would happen before the video finished buffering.
Cal State LA charges tuition for this. Abdullah draws a salary. The agent she doxxed is the one whose safety depends on whether her audience took her literally or not.
