Higher Education / Fair and Balanced
This is my first post here at the Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, so a little background. I'm the East Coaster here, and somewhere between a libertarian and neo-conservative PhD student in one of the country's top Public Policy programs in a blue state. Michael Moore was paid $30,000 from our student activities fees to speak on campus here in November. Needless to say I'm a little different than that my classmates and professors. Usually it's a fun, though sometimes frustrating, part to play.

Here is the latest in "diversity in academia":

I pick up our student newspaper this week and read "This space left intentionally hate free." Huge headline. The space underneath is a letter from the editor explaining how he refuses to print a letter in the form of an ad that David Horowitz tried to purchase.

The ad is contentious (read it below), but certainly we in higher education can read such contentious pieces, diversity of thought and experience is the whole point of American education, right? I guess not.

Here is my letter to the editor of our newspaper:

Dear editor,

I respect the right of every newspaper's editor to decide what advertisements are and are not appropriate for their publication. However, as an agent for this university, I think it is clearly not balanced that our Student Activities Committee pays $30,000 to bring Michael Moore to speak on campus, but student newspaper will not allow David Horowitz to purchase an ad for an editorial.

As justification for blocking Horowitz's ad you cite his desire to "play off tension and hatred and divide the community." Playing off existing tensions and hatred to divide the community is precisely what Michael Moore does all of the time. There are few more polarizing figures in American pop-culture.

While I realize that it was two different university groups that invited Michael Moore but blocked David Horowitz, perhaps the appropriate remedy is to invite Mr. Horowitz to write an editorial. The newspaper's editors could work on this piece with Mr. Horowitz to ensure the piece is not overly offensive (the original piece he tried to print, available at www.frontpagemag.com, was not).

At the same time, I am not surprised that the university is afraid to have an honest debate about the role of religion and terrorism throughout the world today. While universities throughout this country strive for diversity, too many only value diversity that is skin deep.

Sincerely,
...



The text of the Horowtiz Ad:


ISRAEL IS THE CANARY IN THE MINE

The war between Arabs and Jews is not the cause of the war on terror, as apologists for Muslim radicals claim; it is the war on terror.

Twenty-five years ago, there were two non-Islamic democracies in the Middle East: Israel and Lebanon. This was too much for Islamic radicals, Syrian irredentists and Palestinians who joined forces to destroy Lebanon and make it a base for terror.

The goal of the post-Oslo Intifada is not to establish a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Its goal is an Islamic umma extending "from the Jordan to the sea." That is why Oslo was rejected by Arafat even though Barak and Clinton offered him an independent state on virtually all of the land Palestinians claimed in the West Bank of the Jordan and Gaza. That is why the very birth of Israel is referred to by all the present Palestinian leadership as the "Naqba" - the "catastrophe." To Islamic radicals at war with the West, the very creation of Israel is a catastrophe.

American apologists for Arab aggression are also apologists for Islamic aggression. In their eyes, Arab terror in the Middle East has a root cause in the policies of Israel, whom terrorists refer to as the "little Satan." For apologists of the Islamic terror of 9/11 and the Zarqawi terror in Iraq, jihad is not a self-generating creed but has a "root cause" in the policies of "the Great Satan," which is us.

Peace in the Middle East and peace in the war with al-Qaeda and Zarqawi will come only when the terrorists surrender or are defeated, and when Arab governments cease their incitement of hatred against Israel and the United States.

David Horowitz

- served up by Anonymous @ 9:03 AM