The Shame of Brandeis: Caving to the lynch mob

Dr. Phyllis Chesler, noted feminist author has written this News.Max.com opinion piece on la’affaire Ayyan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University, “The Shame of Brandeis“. We draw your particular attention to identification of Brandeis faculty member Jytte Klausen, author of the redacted Yale Press book that eliminated all of the Jyllands Posten Danish Mohammed cartoons.

Klausen, herself the subject of censorship by her publisher, is cited by Chesler as a signatory of the Brandeis faculty letter requesting President Lawrence to withdraw Ali’s honorary degree at next month’s Commencement. We are sure that Lars Hedegaard executive editor of Dispatch International in Copenhagen will have choice comments about Ms. Klausen’s participation in this dastardly act against free speech.

Note these comments from Chesler’s essay:

Yale University drove the first nail into the coffin of academic freedom, freedom of thought, and critical inquiry, when Yale’s University Press refused to publish the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons to accompany Jytte Klausen’s 2009 book on the subject: “The Cartoons That Shook The World.”

Ironically, none other than Brandeis Professor, Jytte Klausen, the author of “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” published her views in the Brandeis student newspaper The Justice. In her (Stockholm-syndrome?) view, giving Hirsi Ali a degree “undermines years of careful work to show that Brandeis University promotes the ideals of shared learning, religious toleration and coexistence, irrespective of religion.”

Danish Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard visited Yale amidst protests by Muslim student in October 2009. That visit coincided with Klausen’s talk at the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, a subsequent victim of denial of academic free speech. Westergaard and Lars Hedegaard had caught up with Brandeis University professor Jytte Klausen, author of “The Cartoons that Shook the World”, for a discussion before the event began. Apparently she had met Westergaard during her research for the book. We noted Klausen’s comments on that occasion in an Iconoclast post about Rabbi Jonathan Hausman encounter with Westergaard at a Branford College Master’s Tea presentation:

“I want to stress that, of course, the argument can be made that the cartoons are offensive,” Klausen said. “It is very problematic in my view because it assumes that Muslims really did respond to the cartoons based on the notion that they are taboo or bad and lack the self-control to deal with that. My book contradicts that argument.”

See our interview with Dr. Chesler, An American Feminist Fighting Sharia: an Interview with Dr. Phyllis Chesler.

The Shame of Brandeis

by Phyllis Chesler

By now, we all know that Brandeis University was about to bestow an honor on the elegant and distinguished author and activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her critique of Islam, her decision to leave Islam, and her championship of Muslim women’s rights.

One might understand why an apostate intellectual might be in danger in Somalia, the country of her birth, or in Saudi Arabia, where she once lived.

However, she has just been dishonored by Brandeis University, which withdrew its offer of a Distinguished Professorship because the Muslim Brotherhood in America, known to us as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its national student group, the Muslim Students Association, which is also allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) mounted a successful campaign against the award. Both CAIR and ISNA are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case.

CAIR provided the Muslim Student Association (MSU) at Brandeis with outdated, out-of-context, and highly inflammatory quotes from Hirsi Ali. They did not provide her thought-provoking, stirring, moving passages of which there are many. Brandeis simply caved to the lynch mob.

This is a terrible moment for academic freedom and critical inquiry on the American campus.

Yale University drove the first nail into the coffin of academic freedom, freedom of thought, and critical inquiry, when Yale’s University Press refused to publish the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons to accompany Jytte Klausen’s 2009 book on the subject: “The Cartoons That Shook The World.”

Yale drove a second nail into that coffin when it ousted Dr. Charles Small, who dared to focus on the victims of contemporary anti-Semitism, not merely on safely dead Jews. Dr. Small’s major international conference on this subject in 2010 had more than 100 speakers and 600 in attendance. The conference did not demonize the Jewish or American states and it did look at Jew-hatred and the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries today.

However, official Palestinian and student Palestinians insisted this was an “Islamophobic” conference. A campaign was mounted and Yale administrators and professors dismissed Dr. Small’s Institute although it was independently funded.

Brandeis University, the “Jewish” university, (in terms of liberal values), has now driven the a nail into the coffin of academic freedom and intellectual diversity, when it bowed to student and faculty pressure and rescinded their offer to Hirsi Ali.

I am outraged, saddened, and frightened all at the same time. I have sentimental ties to Brandeis and I am suffering their betrayal of their own stellar values.

I understand that perfectly peaceful Muslim students at Brandeis may not wish to be associated with the hate propaganda and terrorist atrocities being committed in Islam’s name. They should be standing outside the mosque that indoctrinated the Boston bomber with signs reading “ Not in my Name,” and listing the gender and religious apartheid that characterize Islam today, and the Muslim-on-Muslim and Muslim-on-infidel violence being committed in the name of a religion that is dear to them. They should be holding teach-ins at mosques and within Muslim communities about human rights in Islam and wrestling with the question of whether radical Islam is compatible with modern Western values.

Hirsi Ali is a consummate intellectual. Students should hear what she has to say. Instead, Brandeis and the Muslim Student Association have taken a Sharia-like position about apostates and the anti-Islamist position she has adopted. The Brandeis MSA student Facebook page is filled with an attitude of offended Islamist supremacism and rage over alleged “Islamophobia.”

Ironically, none other than Brandeis Professor, Jytte Klausen, the author of “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” published her views in the Brandeis student newspaper The Justice. In her (Stockholm-syndrome?) view, giving Hirsi Ali a degree “undermines years of careful work to show that Brandeis University promotes the ideals of shared learning, religious toleration and coexistence, irrespective of religion.”

Klausen was joined by Brandeis Professors Mary Baine Campbell and Susan Lanser of the English Department. Campbell told Justice that “Hirsi Ali represents values that Brandeis, in naming itself after Justice [Louis] Brandeis, … was founded in noble opposition to.” Professor Susan Lanser said that Hirsi Ali’s (outspoken views on Islam) foment an intolerance that is wholly antithetical to Brandeisian values.”

Women’s and Gender Studies Professor Mitra Shavarini, told the Justice that offering this award to Hirsi Ali is not in line with the University’s mission, unless it wishes to “incite hate, mistrust and division among its community.” She further stated that Hirsi Ali’s approach to discourse “collapses thought in obscure, non-contextualized allegations that have no intellectual merit.” Alas, this is the language being used these days by professors on American campuses.

I have been told that more than forty professors signed a petition against honoring Hirsi Ali.

American campuses have long welcomed critiques of Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism etc. on the grounds of misogyny and Biblical-era atrocities. Secularists, atheists, anti-religionists have been lionized. Great thinkers have, historically, condemned religion—all religion. Think of Voltaire, or Bernard Russell.

Over the years, Brandeis has awarded Distinguished Professorships to a wide variety of worthy people. The awards are wide-ranging, balanced and reasonable.

In 1987, the award was given to Adrienne Rich who said “With initial hesitation but finally strong conviction I endorse the Call for a U.S. Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel.” Although I am an admirer of her poetry, I believe that some of her awards, perhaps not this one, were given in recognition of the presumably “bold” stand she took on boycotting the Jewish state. In 2000, Brandeis also gave this award to Desmond M. Tutu, who has been quoted as saying that the “Jewish lobby” is too “powerful and scary.” In 2006, Brandeis gave this award to Tony Kushner who is on record saying that he can “unambivalently say that I think it’s a terrible historical problem that modern Israel came into existence.”

One can openly criticize the Jewish state and be lionized. There was no groundswell of protest against these awards; if there were, they were not successful.

The conclusion: One can criticize Judaism, the Jewish state, America, real apartheid in South Africa, but one cannot criticize Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic supremacism, and Islamic gender and religious apartheid without being attacked and silenced.

ABOUT PHYLLIS CHESLER

Phyllis Chesler is professor emerita at the City University of New York. She has lived in Kabul, Jerusalem, and New York City. The latest of her 15 books is “An American Bride in Kabul.”