What If Our Constitution Were Written Like Campus Speech Codes? The FIREorg via YouTube, June 21, 2016
Archive for the ‘Academia’ category
Trump Announces Major Speech on Clinton Scandals Next Week!
June 8, 2016Trump Announces Major Speech on Clinton Scandals Next Week via YouTube, June 7, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7HuqODuPw0
Here’s a link to an article at Jonathan Turley’s blog. It notes the Trump University “scandal,” widely covered by the media, and then segues to a far worse scandal involving the Clintons and the Laureate Education for-profit college. Here’s a quote:
The respected Inside Higher Education reported that Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 to serve as an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities. While Bill Clinton worked as the group’s pitchman, the State Department funneled $55 million to Laureate when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. That would seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University scandal. [Emphasis added.}
There was even a class action — like the Trump University scandal. Travis et al v. Walden University LLC, was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Maryland but dismissed in 2015. It is not clear why it was dismissed. However, the size of the contract to Clinton, the payment from State and the widespread complaints over alleged fraud should warrant a modicum of attention to the controversy. The controversy has many of the familiar complaints over fraudulent online programs that take advantage of hard working people.
I found the video posted above in one of the comments appended to the Turley article. Will Trump deal with the Clinton schools scam?
DePaul Islamic chaplain has praised Anwar al-Awlaki and other jihad terrorists
May 29, 2016DePaul Islamic chaplain has praised Anwar al-Awlaki and other jihad terrorists, Jihad Watch,
Chaplain Abdul-Malik Ryan:
The Islamic revival is continuing. The evil nature of U.S. plans are clear to most Muslims, especially the youth and especially the active practicing Muslim youth living in the U.S. itself. They plot and plan, but Allaah is the Best of Planners. In fact, the popularity and understanding of the true message of Islam continues to grow in the Muslim world and the concept of re-establishing the Islamic State, or re-establishing the Khilafah is everywhere seen as much more realistic and likely than it was even 15 years ago.
************************
That this jihadi would have a job at DePaul or any American university shows what a radioactive wasteland of filth American academia has become. DePaul (and other universities) wouldn’t hesitate to employ a man who openly praises jihad terrorists, but they wouldn’t be caught dead hiring an outspoken foe of jihad terrorists.
Abdul-Malik Ryan is the Islamic chaplain of Chicago’s DePaul University and also serves as Assistant Director of Religious Diversity at the college’s Loop campus. He also goes by the alias “Abu Noor al-Irlandee” (“al-Irlandee” is Arabic for “the Irishman”). Ryan is not only an open supporter of Muslim terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, he has ties to traitor and convicted terrorist John Walker Lindh.
Meet Abdul-Malik Ryan
Abdul-Malik Ryan is an American of Irish descent who obtained his bachelor’s degree from DePaul and also attended Georgetown Law School. Prior to becoming DePaul’s Islamic chaplain, he worked as an attorney in the Cook County child protection system.
Ryan converted to Islam in 1994 when he was a student at DePaul, initially joining the Nation of Islam, the radical black nationalist organization led by Louis Farrakhan; he would later become an Orthodox Muslim. According to my contacts, prior to his conversion, Ryan also served as the president of DePaul’s Communist club, though I haven’t turned up any evidence of this so far.
Some of Abdul-Malik Ryan’s radical left-wing beliefs are well-known: according to Breitbart’s Tom Ciccotta, he has cheered on the declining white majority in America, supports cop killers, and believes that it is immoral for the U.S. to refuse to accept Syrian refugees. However, at his blog Abu Noor al-Irlandee, he has openly expressed support for Muslim terrorists who kill Americans and Europeans.
Abdul-Malik Ryan’s Terrorist Problem
On his blog, Abdul-Malik Ryan refers to himself as an “unrepentant Fenian Islamist” and posts articles supportive of Islamic terrorism. In a deleted post from 2008, he praises Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was the mastermind behind the 2009 Fort Hood massacre by Nidal Hasan and the attempted Christmas day bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Ryan writes:
…Shaykh al-Awlaki is one of those rare speakers that combines articulateness with being blunt and clear and fearless in his analysis. Most people who are articulate and can speak well use those skills in order to make less clear what they are actually saying or in order to speak to multiple audiences at once, or to create “plausible deniability” in the future if someone wants to come after them for what they “seem to be saying.” There may be reasons for all of this, but when someone speaks clear and directly (as Allaah (swt) says speak clearly and directly to the point Surah Ahzab Ayah 70) then it naturally appeals to people, even when people don’t agree with everything you say. This is why someone like Al Hajj Malik Shabazz became beloved even by people who did not agree with some of his message, because they knew where he stood, knew he was on their side, and loved how he spoke the truth. All of which makes Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki and his thought a perfect topic for my “Alternative Visions” series!
Ryan also heaps praise on the “Mujahideen” (guerrilla terrorists) killing American soldiers in Iraq and affirms his support for establishing an “Islamic State”:
But despite all of that, the plans of the United States are not working. The Islamic revival is continuing. The evil nature of U.S. plans are clear to most Muslims, especially the youth and especially the active practicing Muslim youth living in the U.S. itself. They plot and plan, but Allaah is the Best of Planners. In fact, the popularity and understanding of the true message of Islam continues to grow in the Muslim world and the concept of re-establishing the Islamic State, or re-establishing the Khilafah is everywhere seen as much more realistic and likely than it was even 15 years ago. [Text bolded by me – ed.]
At the end of the post, Ryan states that there are only a “few minor areas” where he “perhaps disagree[s]” with al-Awlaki and prays that Allah “protect and preserve him and keep him free!” He also prays for the release of several other Muslim terrorists and captured enemy combatants, including John Walker Lindh, and advocates that Muslims use “mass civil disobedience” to resist Islamic terrorist groups from being designated as such by the U.S. government:
The next recommendation is that stories of corruption, immorality, etc. should be promoted about the “extremist” Muslims. This of course means, that if these Muslims, have not committed any crimes you simply make things up or take basic Islamic beliefs and actions and criminalize them.Shaykh al-Awlaki specifically cites what the govenrment did with Imam Jamil Al-Amin (May Allaah free him!) in this context. One can also look to examples like Shaykh Ali al-Timimi (May Allaah free him!), John Walker Lindh (May Allaah free him!), or Muhammad Salah (May Allaah free him!). The only notion of criminalizing any aid or support for a “designated terrorist” organization and then being able to designate whomever you wish as a terrorist organization is nothing less than the criminalization of being a Muslim and daring to support any cause not approved by the U.S. government. (I continue to believe that the only response to this that will be effective at the end of the day is to demonstrate the pure injustice of such laws by mass civil disobedience in which the Muslims in hundreds of thousands publicly and openly support these groups in ways which are clearly moral and right, daring the government to punish us for it. Until then, it will continue to pick off the truly strong among us, but those seen to be weak because they are not supported by the community). [Text bolded by me – ed.]
In another post from 2008, Abdul-Malik Ryan posts a “rebel nasheed” called “Ghurabaa.” A nasheed is a jihadist chant, and this particular one was written by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood when he was in prison. It includes the lyrics “Let us make Jihad together” and “Do not bow your foreheads to anyone besides Allah”:
In another post, Ryan pays homage to Sayyid Qutb, a Wahabbist theologian, leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the spiritual father of al-Qaeda and ISIS:
May Allaah (swt) accept Sayyid Qutb as a martyr forgive him any mistakes, sins and shortcomings. May Allaah (swt) show his mercy to all the Muslims and to all of the oppressed during the blessed month of Ramadan. [Text bolded by me – ed.]
There is much more here.
‘Islamophobia Studies’ Are Coming To A College Near You, And There Won’t Be Any Debate About It
May 20, 2016
“Before I get started, I just wanted to say that we are meeting on stolen indigenous people’s land. That’s really important to acknowledge.” So declared San Francisco State University race and resistance studies professor Rabab Abdulhadi, at the University of California, Berkeley’s Seventh Annual International Islamophobia Conference in April.
Abdulhadi’s seemingly disjointed declaration was typical of the post-colonial, “intersectionality”-driven jargon of the entire conference, which sought to link the mythical plight of America’s prosperous, content Muslim population, with the struggles of every oppressed minority known to man. It was also an opportunity for two academic centers at opposite ends of the country to join forces and promote what was euphemistically referred to at the 2015 UC Berkeley conference as “Islamophobia studies.”
While UC Berkeley Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP) director and conference convener Hatem Bazian gave the opening remarks, John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) and project director of ACMCU’s Bridge Initiative, “a multi-year research project that connects the academic study of Islamophobia with the public square,” was the undisputed star.
Esposito was introduced by Munir Jiwa, director of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, who, after noting that one of the scheduled speakers on the same panel was unable to attend, added with a smile, “I’m sure Dr. Esposito will be happy to take up the time.” Esposito did not disappoint, delivering a long, rambling talk filled with humorous asides and one-liners to which the audience responded with hearty laughter. He clearly reveled in being the center of attention and joked at the outset about his family, “They think I’m a humble person; my wife will tell you that I’m faking it.”
Musing on his experiences in academe regarding Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Esposito claimed that prior to that, “there was no Islam unit in the American academy” and thus, “no jobs when I finished my degree.” He later returned to the subject: “The first half of my career, people treated me like an academic, which means they ignore you. You’re in the Ivory Tower, who cares? The Iranian revolution changed that.”
Esposito lamented that the “lens through which Islam and Muslims came to be seen was people chanting, ‘Death to America,’” and, blaming the U.S. instead of Iran’s bellicose theocracy, concluded, “The danger was that we’re looking for a new global threat” and “Islam was the only global ideology.”
Presenting “Islamophobia” as an empirical fact, Esposito wondered aloud that there are “still those who want to say it does not exist.” He criticized “the mainstream media” for promulgating this alleged bigotry beginning with the Ground Zero Mosque controversy and, after announcing that “media coverage of Islam hit an all-time high” in 2015, conceded that “the causes are fairly obvious and some of them are good reasons to be concerned: international terrorist attacks.” Yet, he accused the media of “hyping the threat in America and Europe” and insisted, referencing the April 19 anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, that the “main terrorist threat is from white, anti-government, also often Christian-identity type movements. That has to come out.”
Turning to the “anti-Islamophobia” movement, Esposito praised reports from biased, complicit sources such as the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR)—a conference cosponsor—and the Center for American Progress for exposing a “cottage industry” and funding “for these kinds of things,” before directing the audience to the Bridge Initiative website. He said nothing about the conflict of interest in Bridge’s substantial Saudi funding, instead focusing on the initiative’s efforts to “set up alternative narratives,” “penetrate social media,” and achieve “search engine optimization,” before deducing, “It’s the storytelling.”
Clearly, that “storytelling” has had its intended effect in Western academe, for, in a revealing statement, Esposito pointed out that, “As someone who speaks at a lot of conference and universities, the last few years, ninety percent of my invitations [in the U.S. and UK] have to do with Islamophobia.”
It’s little wonder that “Islamophobia studies” appears to be proliferating. IRDP is certainly doing its part with its politicized bi-annual publication, the Islamophobia Studies Journal, and by linking this year’s conference with the Bridge Initiative and by extension, the East Coast with the West.
“Islamophobia studies” may be in its infancy, but the growing number of national and international conferences devoted to the subject indicate a disturbingly bright future for this anti-intellectual endeavor. And why not? Given the politicized, pro-Islamist nature of Middle East studies and victimology’s pride of place in contemporary academe, it’s a Faustian bargain for our time.
Chicago College Council Backs BDS for Israel, Not China
May 12, 2016Chicago College Council Backs BDS for Israel, Not China, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 12, 21016
Some students at the University of Chicago set out to prove that divestment resolutions aren’t about human rights, but hating Jews. They proved their point quite easily with a China divestment resolution.
Last week, some students at University of Chicago, where I attend, proposed a resolution to our College Council to divest from Chinese weapons manufacturers, in protest of China’s severe human rights abuses and its long-standing occupation of Tibet.
Members of the council were quick to condemn the resolution, and for good reason. The members noted it was political, and disrespectful to Chinese students. Other members noted that Chinese students should be given time to respond to the presenters with a counter-presentation. One representative even suggested that the College Council issue an apology to Chinese students for even considering the resolution. The resolution was tabled indefinitely.
Curiously, when a few weeks earlier the same College Council passed a nearly identical resolution condemning Israel, no one suggested an apology. These same representatives argued why it was their moral imperative to condemn Israel. They were determined to push this through at all costs, and despite requests, they didn’t even offer the other side an opportunity to present.
Over the past few weeks I have been told that Jews “don’t count” as a minority. I have been accused of using anti-semitism to justify oppression. All I want to know is why my campus doesn’t treat anti-semitism with the same rigor with which it treats any other forms of bias.
When Jews stood before the council, and asked that it recognize the Jewish right to self-determination, a basic right for all people, people in the room laughed. One representative noted that “If we were to affirm the right to Jewish self-determination … it takes away from the intent of the resolution”.
Students in the room that day called us racists and murderers and “apartheid supporters”, for even thinking we, as Jews, could have a voice in the discussion over the one small state we call our own. A Jewish student was chided “You are racist and you are against me and my family’s existence”. It was uncivil, and unproductive, but the council-members did not once that day condemn the personal nature of these attacks, or defend the rights of the opposition to make their case.
At one point, a student questioned the presenters, members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), about their organization allegedly holding a moment of silence for Palestinians who were killed while trying to murder Jewish Civilians. One of the presenters confirmed the moment, then responded without missing a beat “Palestinians have a right to honor their martyrs”.
If the killing of any other ethnic group had been celebrated, the University would make grief counselors available. It would send out mass emails of condemnation. They would suspend the organization responsible, and possibly the students involved in it. The organization would certainly not have any credibility to present to the student government. Since the victims were Jews though, their celebration of murder went unchallenged. The representatives never even brought the issue up.
On the third slide of the presentation in favor of the resolution, presenters claimed that voting against the resolution would mean “maintaining a system of domination by Jews”.
Now this is taking place at the same time that sombreros are considered racist and Trump chalkings are denounced as hate crimes. But celebrating the murder of Jews is always okay.
Of the members of the College Council at the University of Chicago, Peggy Xu backed BDS for Israel but was offended by the idea of holding China accountable. Michael Meng also aggressively pushed the campaign against the Jewish State. Michael Meng very predictably opposed the China BDS resolution.
And Peggy Xu has announced that she’s running again because, “My time in SG has been simultaneously enlightening, difficult, and incredibly fulfilling, and it would be an honor to continue advocating for an SG that is inclusive, equitable, and responsive to student needs.” I’m not sure what’s equitable and inclusive about hating Jews.
Moments like these make it clear that this is not about human rights. It’s about using colleges as a forum for tribal hatreds, in this case legitimizing the expression of anti-Semitism.
BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses
May 12, 2016BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, May 12, 2016
Anti-Semitic incidents seem to spring up each week on college campuses throughout the United States. According to a study, “The strongest predictor of anti-Jewish hostility on campus” is the presence of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
The greater the BDS activity, especially involving faculty members, the more likely anti-Semitic episodes become, said the study issued last month by the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, and combating anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses.
One recent example occurred on April 15, when the City University of New York Doctoral Students’ Council passed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, 42-19. Weeks earlier, a CUNY professor and BDS advocate claimed that the killing of Palestinians in Gaza “reflects Jewish values.” On CUNY campuses, the New York Observer reports, Jewish students were harassed, with “Jews out of CUNY” uttered in at least one instance, and a professor who wears a yarmulke was called a “Zionist pig.”
On April 21, two-thirds of a union representing about 2,000 graduate students at New York University voted to approve a motion to support a BDS resolution against Israel. The motion also urges the union and its affiliate, the United Auto Workers, to divest from Israeli companies. The resolution asks NYU to close its program at Tel Aviv University, claiming the program violates NYU’s non-discrimination policy.
About a month earlier, NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one of the main organizing forces behind the nationwide BDS campaign, hosted Israeli academic Ilan Pappé, described by Benny Morris as “one of the world’s sloppiest historians.”
“Pappé blamed Jews, perceived historically as evil, for antisemitism stating, ‘The [Jewish] Israelis…are responsible for bringing antisemitism back.’ He denied Jews self-determination and demonized Israel stating, ‘evil Zionism will come to an end – all immoral regimes do’ as well as suggested rich Jews should leave Israel as a process of ‘decolonization.’ He further demonized Israel throughout accusing Israel of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ multiple times. Pappé delegitimized Israel consistently referring to Israel as a ‘settler colonialist project,’ …[and] promoted BDS.”
The Jewish Law Students Association at Harvard University and Harvard Hillel co-sponsored an event April 14 on “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict & the U.S.” During the question and answer session, Husam el-Qoulaq, an HLS student and head of SJP at the school, insulted Israeli Knesset Member Tzipi Livni by asking, “How is it that you are so smelly?… A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I was just wondering.” The student’s question resurrected the anti-Semitic stereotype of a “smelly/dirty Jew.” Incredibly, some “progressive” HLS Jewish students later defended el-Qoulaq.
As BDS campaigns spread on campuses, anti-Semitic expression increasingly follows – from swastika-filled vandalism at UC Davis and Purdue University to student “debates” at Stanford University that implicitly dignify classical anti-Semitic tropes about Jews controlling the media and economy. Among other recent incidents:
- April 20: At Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, there have beensix anti-Semitic incidents reported on campus since last December. These involved swastikas on walls or doors of residence halls, messages including “I am a Nazi” and “Hitler did nothing wrong,” a faculty member making anti-Semitic gestures in a classroom, and a Star of David with an “X” scratched into it on the window of a bus.
- April 19: At the University of Maryland, about two dozen protesters arrived at a Hillel and Jewish Student Union event called, “Israel Fest” and, for about an hour, chanted, “Fight the power; turn the tide; end Israeli apartheid” and held signs saying “Zionism kills.”
- April 15: At the University of Notre Dame, a letter published by three students in the school newspaper accused Israel of apartheid and directed readers to the Anti-Semitic site “IfAmericansKnew” and the site for a major BDS group, Jewish Voice for Peace.
- April 10: At Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College, participants at the U.S. Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) were forced to justify the motion, “This House Believes That Violence By Palestinians Against Israeli Civilian Targets Is Justified.”
According to AMCHA, 2016 already has seen 171 anti-Semitic/BDS incidents as of April 21. At this rate, 2016 will see a 36 percent increase in incidents over last year.
Faculty members have become increasingly active in BDS efforts and smears. During a talk at Vassar College in February, Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar accused Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs and conducting scientific experiments in “stunting” the growth of Palestinian bodies. Last month, 40 Columbia University professors signed a BDS petition. More recently, one pro-BDS professor even tried to link campus rape to Israel. As Rochester Institute of Technology lecturer A.J. Caschetta notes, “at a time when much of academe is jumping on the BDS bandwagon, there is little risk to academics who join the movement, whereas opposition to majority leftist positions often leads to a perilous path.”
Indeed, academics who buck this trend may be endangering their careers. At Connecticut College, one of the few professors who defended Andrew Pessin, who hasn’t been in his classroom for the past year after a hate-filled campaign miscast his comments about Hamas as a smear on all Palestinians, says his stance cost him a promotion. Manuel Lizarralde, associate professor in Ethnobotany, wrote in a faculty-wide email Jan. 26 that the college “acted like vigilantes and found the perfect scapegoat,” in Pessin.
Within days, Lizarralde said, he was called in by the administration for a scolding. Noting that he was recently denied promotion, Lizarralde suggested in a recent email that this was payback for his support of Pessin. Connecticut College has “a sense of racism since we are Latinos, Jews and advocate for social injustice…[and we] are being punished [for such activism].”
Responding to the negative media coverage generated by the Pessin case, Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron published an email to the faculty March 28, in which she championed “the right of all its members to express their views freely and openly.” She failed to explain how that principle applied to Pessin, who was hounded off campus for expressing his views, only to see them twisted and turned against him. She said that the school should promote “reasoned and informed debate about the most complex issues of our time,” but Pessin’s absence leaves the school with no pro-Israel voice. When asked about the contradictions between her email and the Pessin affair, she declined to comment.
Meanwhile, outrage against Connecticut College continues to build, with a petition to investigate the Pessin affair and revoke the school’s accreditation now exceeding 1,500 signatures.
Just as the character assassination targeting the only pro-Israel voice at Connecticut College appeared as a total surprise, BDS campaigns to influence student government votes across the country pop up with minimal notice, just weeks before the vote, giving the opposition little time to organize. That strategy helped secure SJP a BDS victoryat the University of Chicago undergraduate student government in March.
It failed to persuade the university’s administration, though.
Who is funding BDS? Analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently told members of Congress that former employees of Hamas-linked charities now work for the Illinois-based organization American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the US, a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” Schanzer noted that AMP provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP campus activists. More surprising, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has given anti-Israel BDS organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center.
On campus after campus, the BDS movement has proven itself to be well organized and determined to poison the minds of impressionable students against Israel. It will take an equally concerted and sustained effort to oppose BDS in academia.
Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters
April 30, 2016Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters, Front Page Magazine, Sara Dogan, April 29. 2016
A series of posters created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center targeting proponents of the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish state have incited a storm of controversy on the San Diego State University campus where hundreds of students swarmed University President Elliot Hirshman to claim that he did not condemn the posters forcefully enough and demanding an apology.
The Freedom Center’s posters identified by name a number of prominent student and faculty BDS activists on the campus and described them as having “allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus.” The posters also contained the hashtag #StopTheJewHatredonCampus, the slogan of the Freedom Center campaign which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and refute the genocidal lies spread by Palestinian terrorists and their campus allies. These lies include the claims that Israel occupies Palestinian land and that Israel is an apartheid state.
Protestors were also incensed by a print ad taken out by the Freedom Center in the Daily Aztec.
The ad states:
There is an epidemic of Jew hatred on American campuses and at San Diego State University. This Jew hatred is incited by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Association and assorted leftist groups, all of whom support the terrorist organizations Hamas and Fatah.
The ad goes on to explain that both SJP and MSA were created by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and that both groups “disseminate genocidal lies about Israel whose purpose is to weaken and destroy the world’s only Jewish state.”
Posters for the campaign appeared on five California campuses, including at UCLA and UC-Berkeley, where they also sparked protests from anti-Israel activists, as well as university administrators who falsely characterized them as “hate speech.” Images of all the posters may be viewed here. Accounts of the protests and administrator responses can be read here.
In an email sent to San Diego State’s entire student body on Tuesday, Hirshman criticized the posters but also defended the importance of free speech: “First, we recognize and fully support the rights of all parties to voice their positions on political issues, whether supportive or critical. We also understand that when parties adopt a specific political position they become responsible for their actions and these actions may produce criticism.”
Hirshman’s failure to outright condemn the posters did not sit well with SDSU’s anti-Israel activists and the campus left. The protestors first held a silent protest of Hirshman during the swearing-in ceremony of incoming Associated Students President Jamie Miller. Following that protest, students surrounded a police car in which Hirshman was traveling and detained him for over two hours, chanting “Hirshman, Hirshman, come on out. We have something to talk about.” The Daily Aztec, San Diego State’s campus paper, reported the incident this way:
After leaving the council chambers, protesters got word that Hirshman was in a police cruiser near the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theater, and rushed to “trap” him. The police cruiser was surrounded for over two hours as students chanted and even began praying.
Hirshman eventually got out of the police vehicle and stood to the side, surrounded by members of his administrative staff, who formed a barrier around Hirshman and several leaders of the protest so they could speak.
Photos of the protest taken by the Aztec reveal students holding signs proclaiming “We Demand An Apology” and “Respect My Name.” A large banner hung on a fence adjacent to the protest reads “SDSU THINKS WE ARE TERRORISTS.” Video footage of the protest taken by a local ABC affiliate can be viewed below:
Despite the protestors’ claims to the contrary, it is notable that neither the Freedom Center’s ad nor its posters call SJP and MSA members terrorists. They merely declare that they support anti-Israel terrorists and parrot their propaganda, a claim which any photo of a mock “Israeli apartheid wall” will confirm.
President Hirshman himself confirmed this point while speaking with protestors, saying, “I don’t think they’re saying our students are terrorists. If there was a statement that our students were terrorists and they weren’t, I would certainly condemn that.”
Student activists interviewed by the Aztec defended their actions in detaining President Hirshman. One of the protestors, Hassan Abdinur, who was named on the Freedom Center’s poster as an SJP and MSA activist, stated: “Things have been building up and building up and the university hasn’t done anything so this was our opportunity to kind of stand face-to-face, really close, actually I smelled his breath, with the president of the university and tell him how we feel about what’s going on.”
According to The San Diego Union-Tribune which also reported the story, Hirshman eventually gave the student protestors a brief and nonspecific apology. “If we have done things inadvertently that have upset or hurt people, we are sorry for that,” Hirshman said.
While the protestors finally dispersed following that apology, they remain unsatisfied by Hirshman’s failure to condemn the posters outright. Presumably they were looking for a reaction more in line with UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang who sent an email attacking Horowitz to the entire UCLA community calling the Freedom Center’s posters “repulsive” and “personalized intimidation” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm.”
“[We wanted] an apology to the entire student body for his disrespect and disregard for the student voice [and] opinion,” Mustafa Alemi, a member of SDSU’s Associated Students Board of Directors, and also one of the SJP and MSA activists named on the posters, told the Daily Aztec. “Without our tuition money he’s not living the life he has right now and the fact that it took two to three hundred students to block his car to have a conversation with us is incredibly disrespectful.”
David Horowitz is scheduled to speak on SDSU’s campus on May 5th. It will be interesting to see just how respectful the conduct of SJP and MSA activists will be during his address.
Rutgers goes Sharia-Compliant,
April 28, 2016Rutgers goes Sharia-Compliant, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 28, 2016
The April 5, 2016 issue of The Gleaner, the student paper of Rutgers University–Camden, published a cartoon of Muhammad, Buddha and Jesus in a bar. Its content, however, cannot be known at this point, because at the behest of Muslims on campus, and in a case fraught with implications for the health of the freedom of speech today, the entire issue has been deep-sixed.
Two weeks after the cartoon was published, the April 19 issue of The Gleaner contained a letter from the Muslim Brotherhood campus group, the Muslim Students Association, saying that it found the image offensive and asking The Gleaner to remove the image from the April 5 issue and circulate a new edition of that issue without it. The MSA letter claims that Christians and Jews on campus told MSA members that they, too, found the image offensive.
The MSA letter states: “Even though freedom of speech and press is emphasized and is something all of us value as proud Americans, the University prides itself on diversity of people of different faith and backgrounds so we feel that it is necessary to respect those faiths and backgrounds by honoring their beliefs.”
The April 19 Gleaner also contains a response to the MSA letter, written by Christopher Church, the Editor-in-Chief of The Gleaner. Church apologizes to the MSA and agrees to meet with it “so that we can rectify this issue and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.” He also agrees to remove any copies of the offending April 5 issue from the Gleaner boxes around campus and destroy them.
The Jihad Watch reader who alerted me to this sums up what is wrong here:
1. Freedom of speech is a Constitutional right. It is not negated by someone’s taking offense. This could have been and should have been a chance for Rutgers and The Gleaner to explain why the freedom of speech must be protected as our fundamental bulwark against tyranny, and why that means that we must all learn to put up with material that offends us.
2. Once a group’s feeling offended is taken as decisive, it may begin to take offense at other aspects of campus life it finds offensive. In the MSA’s case, it may begin getting offended at men and women sharing classrooms or coeds wearing tight jeans on campus.
3. In light of the violent attacks on those who have depicted Muhammad, The Gleaner by removing the image is bowing to the implicit threat of violence — which only in the long run encourages more violence. Rutgers’ Art Library recently featured an “artwork” depicting Jesus on a dartboard. It was ultimately removed, but not because it offended Christians. No one cares if Christians are offended: Rutgers officials know that offended Christians won’t murder them. Their solicitousness toward the MSA, by contrast, reveals that they know offended Muslims might very well kill them, and rather than stand up for the freedom of speech and against this kind of bullying, they signal their willingness to surrender and fall into line, accepting Sharia restrictions on speech.
Imagine how Rutgers would react if its Art Library had displayed, instead of this Jesus-on-a-dartboard “artwork,” a cartoon of Muhammad. The air would have been thick with cries of “Islamophobia.” Fragile Leftist students would be running for their safe spaces. The university would be instituting mandatory seminars designed to inculcate the proper “respect” that one must show for “The Other” so as to avoid charges of “racism” and “bigotry.”
The double standard is stark: Jesus crucified on a dartboard is art – and what’s more, it’s courageous. One Rutgers student chortled on Facebook that the dartboard “art” was “hilarious,” and crowed that “we don’t have to cater to the wills of the Church or any denomination of Christianity or religion.” Those who complained would be admonished: Don’t you respect the freedom of expression, you right-wing bigot?
A cartoon of Muhammad, on the other hand, even one as innocuous as the one in The Gleaner appears to have been — that’s an outrage. No one was crowing in that instance about not having to cater to the wills of the mosque. On the contrary, the message was clear: Don’t you respect Muslims as human beings, you right-wing bigot?
This is the kind of “respect” being irrationally violent will win you. Rutgers officials knew that Christians weren’t going to kill them, and that they could mock Christianity with impunity. They would only start blathering about “respect” when it comes to Islam. This respect won at the point of a sword does not bode well for the future of free expression in the West.
90% of 13-Year-Olds at Italian School Would Convert to Islam if ISIS Came to their Home
April 25, 201690% of 13-Year-Olds at Italian School Would Convert to Islam if ISIS Came to their Home, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 25, 2016
From the looks of this, the conquest and Islamization of Europe will be easy.
The German-language site Katholisches.info reports that “90 percent would convert to Islam without hesitation to save their own lives, the Islamic State (IS) should conquer the country. This ‘shock result’ (Il Giornale) came from a survey of 13-year-olds at an Italian secondary school. Only two of 25 students opposed conversion. Both students are from devout Catholic families.”
This “shock result” came during a class discussion on the Islamic State (ISIS): “The teacher gave them information. She told her students also that many fighters of the IS come from Europe. Young Muslims who are the second or third generation immigrants. They are well integrated, come from families with a certain level of prosperity, and several possess a university degree or have begun studies. One of the most infamous executioners of IS was previously a well-known DJ in Europe.”
The teacher reportedly did not sugarcoat the Islamic State’s hostility to Christians and Christianity: “The teacher told her students that the IS destroyed all Christian symbols and threatened everyone who was not willing to convert to Islam with death. She also did not conceal that many Christians were killed, exiled or enslaved because of their faith by IS.”
If the teacher intended this news to make the students resolute in the defense of their ancestral religion and culture, however, it had the opposite effect: all but the two devout Catholic students agreed that if the Islamic State confronted them, they would surrender rather than fight, and would convert to Islam.
Yes, it was just one classroom in one school. But there is no reason to assume that the answer would be significantly different in most schools all over continental Europe, as well as in Britain and even in the United States. Schools where students are taught to value their own cultural heritage, and to be ready to fight to defend it, are rare indeed – in publicly-funded schools all over the West, curricula that taught such a thing would be denounced as “racist” and “xenophobic,” and wouldn’t last long if they were implemented at all.
These children in this Italian classroom are the products of a relativistic, materialistic, hedonistic culture that has relentlessly indoctrinated them with the ideas that all belief systems and cultures are of equal value and are essentially interchangeable, and that it is wrong and “racist” to oppose even an authoritarian and violent ideology, and that defense of one’s homeland and culture is likewise “racist,” and that Judeo-Christian Western civilization is itself uniquely “racist” and responsible for the great majority of the evil in the world.
So what does anyone expect? Does anyone really think that these children and others like them all over the West will grow up to love their countries and their culture and be willing to fight to save them from hostile invaders who mean to conquer and subjugate them? It is much more likely that they will be glad to be subjugated, so as to assuage their guilt over being the children and heirs of the world’s colonialists and enslavers. They have never been taught, and will not be taught, that their new Muslim overlords are in fact the exponents of a culture that has been far more imperialist and more deeply involved in slavery than the West ever was.
As they get used to the dehumanization of women and institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims, these young denizens of Islamizing Europe will console themselves with the lessons they learned in school about how Islam inspired a great and tolerant civilization in al-Andalus and led numerous people to glorious innovations in science, philosophy and more. It will likely never occur to them, since they have never been taught how to think critically, that the Islamic civilization that is asserting control over their homeland and all of Europe is nothing like what they were taught in school to expect, as it is not really either great or tolerant, and is quite hostile to intellectual endeavors that are deemed un-Islamic – which happens all too often.
Even if that subversive thought does cross some of their minds, by then it will be far too late, as most of their classmates will indeed have converted and joined the religion of the overlords, and the rest are rapidly learning to make the necessary adjustments to get along. The Christian remnant in Egypt, and Syria, and Pakistan learned how to do that, adjusting to a precarious existence in which one’s life could be forfeit if one did not show the requisite “respect” to Muslims whenever and wherever and however that respect was demanded. The Christians and post-Christians of Europe will learn how to do so as well. And many will discover, to their surprise and relief, that it is actually quite easy to live as a slave. Once one accepts the fact that freedom is gone, one can savor that responsibility is as well. What could be sweeter?
Op-Ed: Italy’s universities bow to Islam and boycott Israel
April 24, 2016Op-Ed: Italy’s universities bow to Islam and boycott Israel, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, April 24, 2016
An Italian academic appeal to boycott Israeli universities succeeded in obtaining 336 signatures. Of these teachers and researchers, a tenth come from the University of Bologna. But in this oldest university in Europe, no one has shown enough concern to raise a moral issue about the big deal that the Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna has just signed with Saudi Arabia.
Not only that, but some of the protagonists of this academic pact appear in the appeal against the Israeli teachers. It should have been enough to read the report of Freedom House on Saudi universities to figure that maybe needed a little extra caution was in order because at stake is not oil, but our culture: “Academic freedom is limited, informers monitor classrooms for compliance with regulations, such as the prohibition of teaching secular philosophy and religions other than Islam.”
The pact with the Saudis, which will last five years, was launched by the former rector Ivano Dionigi and enshrined under the new one, Francesco Ubertini, both silent on their colleagues who ostracized the Jewish State. In the pact with Riad, we read about “promoting dialogue,” publishing Islamic texts, investing in literature, philology and music, through conferences and seminars, as well as the exchange of professors and students.
Perhaps the Bolognese teachers would have the opportunity to browse through the books used in Saudi schools, where the Jews are called “monkeys” and Christians “pigs”. In the agreement there is also archeology under the care of Nicolo Marchetti, a leading expert on the subject at the University of Bologna: bizarre, since from the time of Muhammad in Mecca only a few buildings remain standing. The others have all been razed to the ground in the name of the war against “idolatry” – to be taken over by luxury hotels or gas pumps. As with the grave of Aminah, the mother of Mohammed, or the house of Abu Bakr, the friend of the Prophet. These Islamists would do the same with the tomb of Dante Alighieri in Ravenna, guilty of having put Muhammad in Hell.
It is not the first exchange agreement with the Saudis. In 2014, the rector of Bologna flew to Riyadh to attend an educational seminar in the presence of Khalid bin al Angari, Minister for Saudi Education. On October 10, 2015, the then rector, along with the Saudi ambassador to Italy, participated in a conference entitled “Tolerance in Islam and coexistence between religions”. Did he know that in Saudi Arabia you can not wear a robe showing the cross, nor open a church and that Christians are persecuted?
Among the supporters of the agreement with the Saudis there is Giulio Soravia, director of the Center of Islamic Sciences at Bologna’s University. The name of Soravia, who in 2011 was sent by the rector to attend a conference in Saudi Arabia, also appears in the academic document against Israel.
While the university was signing this shameful pact with Riyadh, the Saudi Grand Mufti stated that “women who drive are prey of the devil”. What do the feminists from University of Bologna think of that? In addition to submitting to one of the most obscurantist regimes in the world, these professors could prove a bit of solidarity with the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel.
Meanwhile, in Riyadh, an intellectual named Raif Badawi is waiting in prison for the next cycle of lashes, guilty of “insults to Islam” and of being a “liberal”. Much more a liberal than these Italian professors with their double standards and morality.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments