Foehammer’s Anvil

More signs of Fascism and Dhimmitude: divergent opinion is squelched if it offends the “wrong” people, in this case blacks (and can I just say I hate the term African-American — when is the last time someone called me Irish-Italian-American? The little checkboxes on all the surveys and tests and applications clearly state something else altogether for me to mark) and, predictably, Muslims. Details from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

BOSTON, May 11, 2007- Showing profound disregard for free speech and freedom of the press, Tufts University has found a conservative student publication guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment for publishing political satire. Despite explicitly promising to protect controversial and offensive expression in its policies, the Tufts Committee on Student Life decided yesterday to punish the student publication The Primary Source (TPS) for printing two articles that offended African-American and Muslim students on campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has spearheaded the defense of TPS, is now launching a public campaign to oppose Tufts’ outrageous actions.

“We now know that Tufts’ promises of free expression are hollow,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “By punishing political expression– the type of expression at the very core of the right to free speech –Tufts has shown that, in spite of its promises, it has no regard for its students’ fundamental rights. Such hypocrisy must not go unchallenged.”

Last December, TPS published a satirical Christmas carol entitled “Oh Come All Ye Black Folk.” Although TPS runs a Christmas carol parody every year, December’s carol sparked controversy on campus because it harshly lampooned race-based admissions. Realizing that the carol offended large portions of the Tufts community, TPS published an apology on December 6, 2006. Four months later, however, a student filed charges alleging that the carol constituted “harassment” and created a “hostile environment.” Other students filed similar charges in response to TPS’ April 11, 2007 piece entitled “Islam” Arabic Translation: Submission,” a satirical advertisement that ridiculed Tufts” ‘Islamic Awareness Week’ by highlighting militant Islamic terrorism.

The two complaints were consolidated for a hearing before the university’s Committee on Student Life on April 30, 2007. Yesterday, the Committee issued a decision holding that TPS had violated the university’s harassment policy by publishing the two pieces. The Committee found that the carol “targeted [black students] on the basis of their race, subjected them to ridicule and embarrassment, intimidated them, and had a deleterious impact on their growth and well-being on campus.” The Committee also held that the parody of Islamic Awareness Week “targeted members of the Tufts Muslim community for harassment and embarrassment, and that Muslim students felt psychologically intimidated by the piece.”

“By issuing this decision, Tufts University is saying that its students are not strong enough to live with freedom,” Lukianoff said. “Satire and parody are so strongly protected by the U.S. Constitution precisely because they may offend or provoke. Tufts knows that the proper cure for speech one dislikes is more speech, but it has instead elected to meet controversial speech with repression. We call on the president of Tufts to overturn this unwise and illiberal decision.”

Exactly. Since when do we as Americans live in a “safe” intellectual environment? How in the hell did we ever become a free nation if we did not ridicule British Authority and the royals back when the very tough choices had to be made and a Revolution started? How did we ever fight a Civil War on principal, free blacks from slavery and then have the wisdom to reconnect as a Union and remain the United States of America if we did not have the means to offend, discuss and sometimes rail at each other? These universities that are attempting to protect every facet of society from critique because they might be part of a perceived minority are recklessly out of control. Imagine if you will if the Nazi Party was a new and unknown organization and ‘Mein Kampf’ was just being penned by a young Adolph Hitler. These very same rules would then apply and the Nazis would be “protected” from criticism and their party would flourish on one campus and then spring to another.

Debate, harsh criticisms and analysis, rebukes, arguments — these are crucial parts of a nation that is based on democracy and free speech! Do not get in the way of them or reap the consequences.

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process rights, freedom of expression, and rights of conscience on our campuses. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty at Tufts University and elsewhere can be seen by visiting www.thefire.org.

I urge you to go show your support for FIRE.

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