DAVIS, CA (KCRA) Controversial public speaker Milo Yiannopoulos held a rally Saturday on the quad at University of California Davis after his event with Martin Shkreli, put on by the Davis College Republicans Club, was canceled.

Yiannopoulos promoted the protest on his Facebook page Saturday morning, asking people “to protest the university’s pathetic failure to protect free speech.”

“UC Davis is lying to the press. They keep saying that the College Republicans were the ones to shut down the event last night. Not true,” Yiannopoulos said on his Facebook page. “My staff were in meetings with the campus police and university administrators last night and were told by them that they event could not proceed. We will be pursuing this matter further.”

Yiannopoulos is an editor at the alt-right website Breitbart and is often accused of being against Islam and feminism.

Shkreli is the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals that received intense scrutiny after the company announced it was raising the price of a life-saving anti-infection drug by more than 5,000 percent.

A large group of protesters gathered at the Science Lecture Hall by 6 p.m. Friday, where Yiannopoulos and Shkreli were scheduled to speak at the invitation of the club.

At times during Friday’s protest, tensions boiled over with shouting matches turning into shoving matches.

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