Anat Berko
Why are some students doing this? Because they
can. No one is stopping them. There is no accountability and no cost -- either
to them or to the people failing to educate them. Bad behavior is rewarded; it
is allowed to go on.
Will self-declared jihadis and other
"speech police" decide what is, and what is not, allowed to be
discussed and taught in Western universities?
Is education now about instilling fear?
The first amendment right should not extend to
depriving others of their first amendment right.
What criteria had the professor used -- and for
that matter Europe -- to determine that Hamas was not a terrorist group, as
opposed to the criteria used by the government of the United States to
determine that, in fact, it was?
Academic freedom in the West is usually a given
-- or was.
Recently, however, American universities have
been allowing students to shout down speakers, "disinvite" others,
and punish -- or threaten to punish -- students simply for respectfully
expressing their views. These curtailments of academic freedom and free speech
place apparently take place without any consequences for those who curtail, agitate
or disrupt. Ironically, often the very people who shut down free speech are
treated as free speech heroes.
The latest display of (repeated) extremely
questionable, if not illegal, judgment by a college administration involved an
academic assault by the Dean of Students at Brandeis University, Jamele Adams,
on an honor-roll senior, Daniel Mael.[1] "They try," Mael said,
"to intimidate students into being silent, in the interest of people's
feelings not being hurt, rather than encourage debate."
These problems, unfortunately, seem to be
widespread. Academic freedom, although sometimes abused, was originally
provided, including tenure, to give scholars the right to communicate ideas
freely, without retaliation, even if these ideas are sometimes viewed as
"inconvenient."
Recently, however, there has been a change.
Academic freedom in the West has been shrinking to a point where in places it
barely exists. Students, chosen so carefully, supposedly come to learn, but
lately seem to have been trying to take over the house -- too often, sadly,
with the complicity of the administrations.
Speakers are not only "disinvited,"
they are shouted into silence or swooshed off the stage. Who is allowing this
behavior?
At a University of Massachusetts Amherst rally even
a few years ago, you could see the hatred and rage in the eyes of the cowardly,
masked demonstrators calling for the destruction of Israel. Many were obviously
not students at all, and many not young and impressionable. They seemed to have
been brought in just to yell slogans and frighten everyone.
Many, however, who did appear to be students,
based on what was said had no knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
itself, but seemed to have come just to demonstrate against Israel. Many even
seemed good, overachieving children from liberal, upper middle class homes, who
had just tagged along, but had no idea what to do in the face of genuine
threats of violence. They seemed mostly worried about their grades.
This time, however, on a recent book tour
through North America, there were guards in the hall, "to keep
order," they said.
"Why would you need to 'keep order?'"
I said. "Is this some East Asian dictatorship?"
They said that at times opposition groups
started violent demonstrations, either to make sure that events did not take
place; or, if they did, to silence the speaker and frighten everyone in the
university so that no one holding those views would ever speak there again.
It was censorship, it was authoritarian, and it
was not what you would expect in the West from a place of higher learning, or
any learning.
That view was seen again -- this time with
threats of violence -- when a well-known Muslim professor, from a respected
American university, said he would like to publish an article together about
young Muslims involved in terrorism, but that he was afraid to use the word
"terrorism" because he and his family could be harmed or ostracized,
and his daughter might never find a husband.
So despite agreeing on the theme, we eventually
had to agree that there was no way we could report any of the findings without
placing him in danger. To avoid publishing lies, we chose to abandon the
project. He feared for his life. In America.
Another odd welcome took place at the
University of Florida in Gainesville, at a talk on the participation of women and
children in terrorism.
The audience was assured that, as a
criminologist, I would not be discussing any political issues, but instead
would talk about the psychological effects of gender discrimination and how
they related to increasing radical Islamic terrorism.
There were two short films first, one from
Pakistan and the other from Iraq, on how young girls were tempted into marriage
and "sacrifice" (shahada); and on the massive use of women and
children in the terrorism industry.
But a few minutes into the talk, a group of
students (judging from how they looked, not all of them may have been students)
walked towards the stage and sat in the front row.
The woman wore traditional Islamic dress, with
her face fully covered; the men wore jeans and torn leather jackets. After a
short while, they stood up, turned around, and unbuttoned their outer clothing
to reveal pro-jihad and anti-Israel signs, which they held up; they then began
shouting, waving their signs and jeering at the students, who by then seemed terrified
into silence.
The group had probably come to disrupt a
"demonic" Israeli, and because speaking about terrorism upset them.
They would be better off, I said, demonstrating
in Syria, where terrorists were gassing and slaughtering women and children.
That was not, apparently, what they had
expected. They looked at each other, then hurried out of the hall.
When the audience settled down, a student asked
if I had been scared. I explained that after more than twenty years of going to
prisons in Israel to interview serial terrorist murderers, I had worse things
to contend with than people interrupting my talks.
They explained that such tactics were often
used there, and that most of the time the lecture was cut short and people went
home.
So, under the cloak of free speech, gangs of
thugs in North America have apparently been silencing free speech in many
universities. Where previously pluralism and freedom of thought were
all-important, they were spreading hate propaganda.
It was unsettling that it took someone from a
foreign country to preserve their right to know, but what was really
frightening was seeing the erosion of academic freedom in such a great
democracy. Do speakers now need security details? Will the academic calendar be
arranged to suit the fancy of whoever is trying to silence opinions that they
might disagree with? Is education now about instilling fear?
Will self-declared jihadis and other
"speech police" decide what is, and what is not, discussed and taught
in Western universities? Where are the university authorities? Why do they not
simply expel whoever is intolerant of academic values? No one is forcing these
students to be there. They may be enjoying their free speech, but they are not
allowing others to enjoy theirfree speech. The first amendment
right should not extend to depriving others of their first amendment right.
Why are these students behaving this way?
Because they can. People are letting them. There is no accountability and no
cost -- either to them or to the people failing to educate them. Bad behavior
is rewarded; it is allowed to go on.
Do the universities not have the means to
protect their students and, more importantly, their institutions? Why are these
hapless administrators not dismissed?
At another well-known university near
Washington, D.C., a student said that one of her professors had told her Hamas
was not a terrorist organization. One had to wonder if this professor actually
knew anything about Hamas -- not just its activities and its agenda to destroy
Israel -- but to kill all the Jews -- and how it was striving
night and day to achieve those ends. What criteria had the professor -- and for
that matter, much of Europe -- used to determine that Hamas was not a terrorist
organization, as opposed to the criteria used by the government of the United
States to determine that, in fact, it was?
There is, however, room for hope. There were
also many Muslim students who had fled the catastrophes brought about by
Islamist radicalism. After one talk, a student named Muhammad said his family
had run from Somalia in fear of al-Shabaab. Jihadist ideas, he said, had
penetrated the madrasas [religious Islamic schools] of
Somalia, which had historically followed Sufi Islam (a spiritual, more peaceful
version). He regretted, he said, that the greatest victims of radical Islamist
terrorism were the Muslims themselves.
A Syrian student, smiling, said that all
humanity had the same enemy.
After another talk in South Florida, in an
auditorium packed with both faculty and students, an aging professor from
Tunisia spoke up. "At school in Tunis, we had both Jewish and Christian
teachers who enriched my intellectual curiosity. But look at what happened to
us," he said. "We got lost."
An Afghan student told us how his family fled
from the Taliban; he said that the wave of extreme Islamic murder had to be
stopped.
Local students came over. Universal humanism
and common sense were being challenged by ignorance and coercion, they said,
and advanced by threats of violence.
One should not have to say that universities
should be protected sanctuaries, and not lawless theaters for terrorism-lite.
Administrators faced with authoritarian
pressures urgently need to ask what they can do to preserve free speech and
free thought.
There is a real danger that idealistic but
naïve students -- usually oscillating between too much confidence and not
enough -- are being pounded from all sides: by peer-pressure; by the wish to be
popular; by censorship from without and within; by "political
correctness" and by radical Islam. These students are coerced into joining
any groupthink at the door without ever seeing how manipulated they are.
Dr. Anat Berko conducts research for the
National Security Council and is a research fellow at the International Policy
Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. A
criminologist, she is author of two books: The Path to Paradise, and The
Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers.
[1] This is the same Brandeis
University that last April disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a refugee from Somalia who became
a member of a the Dutch Parliament, from receiving an honorary doctorate in
April 2014. See also: "Brandeis University: School forScandal";
"Activist Exposes Brandeis UniversityAnti-Israel Faculty Listserv" (uncovered by Daniel Mael).
GatestoneInstitute, Jan. 6, 2015
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