WEDNESDAY,
MAY 21, 2014
From
the Nazis to
the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why
is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of
command, control and confiscation. Basic to their agenda are the tools of
indoctrination, propagandizing, proselytization. Once they gain power, as leftists
have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be
suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses.
Back
in 1964, it was Mario Savio, a campus leftist, who led the free speech movement
at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, a movement that played
a vital role in placing American universities center stage in the flow of
political ideas, no matter how controversial, unpatriotic and vulgar. The free
speech movement gave birth to the hippie movement of the '60s and '70s. The
longhair, unkempt hippies of that era have grown up and now often find
themselves being college professors, deans, provosts and presidents. Their
intolerance of free speech and other ideas has become policy and practice on
many college campuses.
Daniel
Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, updates
us on the campus attack on free speech and different ideas in his article titled
“Obama Unleashes the Left: How the government created a federal hunting license
for the far left” (http://tinyurl.com/mp5x428).
Former
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of the nation’s most accomplished
women, graciously withdrew as Rutgers University's commencement speaker after
two months of campus protests about her role in the Iraq War. Some students and
professors said, "War criminals shouldn’t be honored." One wonders
whether these students would similarly protest Hillary Clinton, who, as senator,
voted for the invasion of Iraq.
Brandeis
University officials were intimidated into rescinding their invitation to
Somali writer and American Enterprise Institute scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose
criticisms of radical Islam were said to have violated the school's "core
values." Brandeis decided that allowing her to speak would be hurtful to
Muslim students. I take it that Brandeis students and officials would see
criticism of deadly Islamist terrorist gang Boko Haram's kidnapping of nearly
300 Nigerian girls, some of whom have been sold off as brides, as unacceptable
and violative of the university’s core values.
Azusa
Pacific University, a private Christian university, canceled a planned address
by distinguished libertarian scholar Charles Murray out of fear that his
lecture might upset “faculty and students of color.” In response to the cancellation,
Murray wrote an open letter to the students, which in part read: “The task of
the scholar is to present a case for his or her position based on evidence and
logic. Another task of the scholar is to do so in a way that invites everybody
into the discussion rather than demonize those who disagree. Try to find
anything under my name that is not written in that spirit. Try to find even a
paragraph that is written in anger, takes a cheap shot, or attacks women,
African Americans, Latinos, Asians, or anyone else.” Unfortunately, such a
scholarly vision is greeted with hostility at some universities.
Earlier
this year, faculty and students held a meeting at Vassar College to discuss a
particularly bitter internal battle over the school's movement to boycott Israel.
Before the meeting, an English professor announced the dialogue would "not
be guided by cardboard notions of civility." That professor might share
the vision of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs of the paramilitary wing of
the Nazi party in their effort to crush dissent.
Western
values of liberty are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college
campuses across America. These people want to replace personal liberty with
government control; they want to replace equality with entitlement. As such,
they pose a far greater threat to our way of life than any terrorist
organization or rogue nation. Multiculturalism and diversity are a cancer on
our society. Ironically, we not only are timid in response but feed those ideas
with our tax dollars and charitable donations.
