The Times of London reports today on yet another episode in the closing of the European mind—in this instance, a shocking case of academic censorship.
Matthias Küntzel, a German political scientist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was invited by the German department at Leeds University for three days of lectures and seminars this week. His lecture on “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Anti-Semitism in the Middle East” was expected to draw a large audience. Then the university’s student Islamic society complained about the lecture’s “provocative” title. Last Tuesday, at the behest of university authorities, the words “Hitler” and “Islamic” were excised and the title was amended to read: “The Nazi Legacy: The Export of Anti-Semitism to the Middle East.” But when Küntzel arrived at Leeds this Wednesday, he was informed that his lecture and the rest of his program had been cancelled “on security grounds.” Küntzel was understandably indignant: “I value the integrity of academic debate, and I feel that it really is in danger here.”
What had happened? Stuart Taberner, the head of the German department, says he was summoned to a last-minute meeting with staff from the office of Michael Arthur, the university’s vice-chancellor, and the head of security, after which he was obliged to cancel Küntzel’s lectures and seminars. The university claimed that proper arrangements for stewarding the lecture on anti-Semitism had not been made, and that it had been cancelled for purely bureaucratic reasons. “The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia,” a Leeds spokeswoman said. (She added insult to injury by accusing “those claiming that is the case”—including Küntzel—of “making mischief.”) The spokeswoman did not explain why the university had not offered to provide additional security during the visit, nor whether the police had been involved.
Was there a threat to security? The president of the Islamic society, Ahmed Sawalem, denied responsibility for the affair: “We just sent a complaint, we did not ask for the talk to be cancelled.” Küntzel was shown two e-mails, one of which—apparently written by an Arab Muslim student—is quoted in the Times. The writer claims that the lecture is an “open racist attack” but makes no explicit threats.
The Küntzel case shows that Muslims do not even need to resort to the threat of violence in order to close down academic debate on subjects they dislike. Anthony Glees of Brunel University has been warning for years of the danger posed by Islamists on campus—a danger to which university authorities are notoriously weak in responding. Before his death last year, I spoke to Zaki Badawi, the leading Muslim opponent of Islamism in Britain, about this problem, which he saw as one of appeasement. This case, however, goes beyond appeasement. Leeds has set a new precedent: the pre-emptive cringe. Islamists everywhere will take heart from the spectacle of a reputable university setting a lower value on academic freedom than on the possibility that Muslim students might take offense.
It will be fascinating to see whether any other British university tries to efface this shameful episode by inviting Küntzel to give the lecture cancelled by Leeds. Perhaps Oxford will follow the example of Yale and many others by offering Küntzel a platform to explain how the Nazis supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. After all, Oxford is proud to provide just such a platform for that scion of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan.
If only .. if only.. .Why couldn’t Blago have appointed Caroline Kennedy? What a missed opportunity! … I am beginning to reconsider the idea that the Republicans are the only gang in Washington that can’t shoot straight.
Why does Ignatius support Obama’s stimulus plan, Jen? He answers that question in the last couple paragraphs of his column, where he reminisces about the Golden Age of the New Deal, and how its jobs programs resulted in shiny bridges. Like most MSM journalists, he totally buys the idea that it’s the New Deal that got us out of the Great Depression. It didn’t – in fact, it lengthened the depression – but journalists like Ignatius don’t understand economics and they honestly believe the government can fix the economy long-term with big-spending “jobs programs.” What Ignatius and his ilk don’t get is that the government doesn’t produce anything, and as Thatcher said, sooner or later the socialists always run out of other people’s money.
The fact that Ignatius doesn’t understand this is of no moment. What’s frightening is that Obama doesn’t understand it either.
What Chip Saltsman did was in such poor taste that no context can explain it away. He needs to make a sincere apology, and republicans need to disown such discousre in toto. We are better than this.
#2 “What Ignatius and his ilk don’t get is that the government doesn’t produce anything”,
Ted,the government produces money, which our free market isn’t allowed to do, with a printing press. But once printed, it needs to be productive. We have a chicken-egg problem,and the chickens are blaming the egg,the egg is blaming the chicken. Bottom line for now,if 70% of our GDP is consumer spending,and the consumers have no “disposible” income,we’re screwed for now. Our job burn rate,right now, is at 26,000,000 annuaL. Tell us how to get those jobless,cashless, house foreclosed consumers back at the mall,and 2009 will be much better.
Thomas Frank has an email address at the Wall Street Journal! Amazing! Frank is to economic thinking as Andrew Dice Clay was to humor, a short exposure might quickly lead to physical illness. Where does he, and so many other central planning obsessives, get the idea that because a portion of the population has advocated laissez-faire and deregulation those two concepts came to dominate our economic model? To them, it is true because they say it is. Government regulation and oversight permeates every aspect of our lives and yet when it fails, that means that we don’t have enough of it, according to Frank.
Hmmm
“Immigration reform is another”
Right. An issue opposed by 80% or more of Americans and it would’ve done Republicans -better- to have passed that pile of crap -and- taken the political hit for it.
Yeah. Right. Sure.
Here’s the deal. I don’t think the Democrats have the courage to pass this crap on their own. They need Republicans to give them political cover because without that they will absolutely refuse to do anything. Look at the nonsense over the bailout. The Democrats could have passed it entirely on their own but refused to because they needed Republicans involved to give them political cover.
Frankly it’s nonsense like this that makes me question your political acumen and relative sanity.
Memomachine:
Quite correct. One of the reasons the GOP may well be better off that McCain lost, is that immigration “reform” (aka, mass legalization of illegals, and massive increases in legal immigration, from groups that reliably vote 65-35 Democratic) was actually a lot likelier to pass in a McCain administration, than it will be under Obama. McCain would have given the Dems cover, as Bush did last time. And anyone who really thinks that passing such “reform” would somehow benefit the GOP is simply delusional.
Hmmm.
@ Jon
“One of the reasons the GOP may well be better off that McCain lost”
Correct. Additionally one of the reasons why McCain lost, amongst many, is that not many conservatives believed anything he had to say about immigration reform. The whole “I get it now” business about securing the borders first and then immigration reform didn’t resonate with anybody because nobody believed him.
IMO I’m going to use McCain’s ridiculous campaign for President as a club to beat Republicans with for the next 20+ years. Next time some twit pushes some twaddle about “electability” and “appeal to moderates” they’re going to get McCain’s imbecility right upside their head.
To put Mr. Frank in perspective: another word for “the market” is “people.” That is, people selling their products and services in all sorts of simple and complicated ways, as people do in all human societies. Frank is basically saying that people can’t be trusted to do this freely, without the oversight of smarter folks like… himself.
But of course discussing this in terms of “the market” and “Big Business” (a euphemism for “lots of people who all work in the same place”), makes these combinations of people sound like sinister conspiracies, instead of people just like you me and, for that matter, Thomas Frank himself.
Given that Gingrich was getting $300,000/yr from Freddie Mac, I’d say that Chip Saltsman’s defense just might work.
The NYT is moribund, at death’s door, finito…All that remains is for the stock market to nail the coffin shut…Hopefully the Dowds, Riches, Friedmans will go to a worse place along with their pestilential spiritual home!!
Nevertheless, for those of us who want a last piece of sadistic pleasure from the corpse, let’s just say that the Isenman suit will be that final screw; cold comfort, of course, but ahhhh…ever so satisfying!
It must not be commonly understood that newspapers carry libel insurance. Otherwise elixelx’s comments are spot on.