Biola University is a private, evangelical Christian, liberal arts university located in La Mirada, California. The university has several satellite campuses in Chino Hills, Inglewood, San Diego, and Laguna Hills.

Biola University was founded in 1908 as the Bible Institute Of Los Angeles by Lyman Stewart, co-owner of the Union Oil Company of California (subsequently known as Unocal and later purchased by the Chevron Corporation), and T.C. Horton, a minister and Christian author.

In 1912, the school appointed R. A. Torrey as dean, and in 1913 began construction on a new building in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of Sixth St. and Hope St., which included a 3,500-seat auditorium for church services by the Church of the Open Door, two large neon signs on top of the building proclaiming "Jesus Saves," and a set of eleven bells on which hymns were played three times each day. In 1949, the institution took the name Biola College, in 1959 it moved south to its present location in suburban La Mirada, and in 1981 it was renamed Biola University.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.