[From article]
The disturbing campaign to suppress speech that is purportedly hurtful, unpleasant, or morally distasteful is a troubling and recurrent pattern of behavior by "progressive" leftists and "social justice" advocates from Muslim-led pro-Palestinian groups. Coalescing around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this unholy alliance has been formed in a libelous and vituperative campaign to demonize Israel, attack pro-Israel individuals, and promote a relentless campaign against Israel in the form of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. As the ideological assault against Israel and Jews intensifies on university campuses, and pro-Israel individuals begin answering their ideological opponents, the student groups leading the pro-Palestinian charge (including such groups as the radical Students for Justice in Palestine [SJP]) have decided that their tactic of unrelenting demonization of Israel is insufficient, and the best way to optimize the propaganda effect of their anti-Israel message is also to suppress or obscure opposing views.
[. . .]
For instance, a leaked memorandum from the Binghamton University Students for Justice in Palestine chapter revealed that members would be required never even to engage in dialogue with pro-Israel groups on their campus. They would be prohibited from "engaging in any form of official collaboration, cooperation, or event co-sponsorship with [pro-Israel] student organizations and groups." And SJP members "shall in no manner engage in any form of official collaboration with any student group which actively opposes the cause of Palestinian liberation nor with groups which have aided and abetted Zionist student organizations" – meaning, of course, that the so-called intellectual debate that universities purport to promote in exactly this type of discussion will never take place when SJP is involved.
Because they cannot win an honest, open ideological debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – because they deal almost exclusively in misrepresentations and untruths (the allegation of Israeli apartheid being the central example) – SJP has characteristically has tried to insure that no pro-Israel voices are heard, by either disrupting and shutting down pro-Israel events and speakers or urging administrators to disinvite speakers they deem Islamophobic, too pro-Israel, or critical of their own tactics and activism.
The thuggish substitution of event disruption and the shutting down of other people's speech for what is supposed to be two-sided academic dialogue and debate occur with increased regularity. These methods mark another, more pernicious, aspect of the campus campaign against Israel, Zionism, and Jews.
At the University of California, Davis this month, for example, George Deek, a Jaffa-born Arab Christian, planned to give a speech entitled "The Art of Middle East Diplomacy" when some 30 pro-Palestinian activists stood up and blocked Deek with banners and took over the event by screaming, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" – meaning an Arab state in place of present-day Israel – and chanting such toxic ditties as "long live the Intifada," "Allahu Akbar," and "When Palestine is occupied, resistance is justified." These activists further employed ghoulish calls for the murder of Jews and "Israel is anti-Black" and "Palestine will be free, fight white supremacy" – an intellectually clumsy way of trying to frame Israel as a racist state.
In February, Bassam Eid, a Palestinian himself and the founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, witnessed how nothing positive said about Israel is allowed to be heard, even from such a credible, though unusual, source as a Palestinian. During his speech, in which he was critical of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for their failure to seek peace, Eid was verbally attacked by a student attendee, who said in Arabic, "Dr. Bassam, do not dare talk about us [Palestinians] anymore. You have shamed our God … you've shamed us, disgraced us, you are a traitor, you are a traitor, in the name of God you are a traitor. … You are worse than the Jews and we will hunt you down and find you in every place. Be prepared." When it became obvious that his speech would not be able to continue uninterrupted, Eid cancelled the event and had to be escorted off site by the police.
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A pro-Israel student group at Columbia University, Artists 4 Israel, was also denied the opportunity to express views during Israeli Apartheid Week, during which the SJP chapter had erected its version of a mock "apartheid wall," emblazoned with anti-Israel slogans and symbols. To counter the display with a pro-Israel one, Artists 4 Israel had set up a 15-foot inflatable figure, a "pro-Israel Pinocchio," replete with a long nose and a sign that read "'Apartheid' Week Compassion Abuse" as an effective, sardonic swipe at SJP's toxic campaign. The chair and vice chair of Columbia's student government, who not coincidentally are members of Columbia's SJP chapter and pro-BDS activists, ordered the removal of the Pinocchio figure, offering the disingenuous justification that Pinocchio's long nose might be construed as anti-Semitic and that the pump used to inflate the figure was too loud for use on the Columbia grounds.
The university officials and student groups who now try to suppress all thought of which they disapprove have sacrificed one of the core values for which the university exists. In their zeal to be inclusive, and to recognize the needs and aspirations of victim groups, they have pretended to foster inquiry, but they have actually stifled and retarded it. As this otherwise noble purpose for the university has devolved, the first victim in the corruption of academic free speech, unfortunately, has been the truth.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/the_lie_of_academic_free_speech.html
March 23, 2016
The Lie of Academic Free Speech
By Richard L. Cravatts
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