Ben Shapiro was 5 feet 2 inches and extremely prepubescent when, in the mid-1990s, he enrolled as a sophomore at a private Jewish high school in Los Angeles. The scrawny new kid had skipped ahead two grades, was too smart, talked too much, and got brutally bullied. Things came to a head when, on an overnight school trip, a few of Shapiro’s classmates handcuffed him to a bed and beat him with their belts.