Biased students in Britain

No place should be more committed to freedom of speech than a university. And perhaps no issue deserves more balance, more variety of voices, and more critical thinking than the Middle East, given its importance in world affairs. Universities should be grounds for critical thinking and pluralism of opinion, not brainwashing. Still, when it comes to the Middle East, the difference between should and is can sometimes be as great as the one between night and day.

Before you think Columbia University and the recent controversy surrounding some of its Middle East studies scholars, or Hamilton College and Ward Churchill, think England and the great tradition of scholarship on the Orient that made U.K. universities so distinguished, their scholars so renowned, and their works so enduring. And before you surmise that scholars manipulate their students into uncritical and one-sided thinking, look at the students. Judging by how this generation promotes free speech and a diversity of opinions, one gets the impression that students don’t need bad teachers to stifle their learning: They are doing well enough on their own.

Enter the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), a famous institution of learning in the heart of London, which is part of the University of London college system…

Consider the following: SOAS’s student union recently hosted Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi, PLO ambassador to London Afif Safieh, and a two-day extravaganza dedicated to boycotting Israel. Not to be accused of one-sidedness - past guests of various student associations include Columbia University professor Joseph Massad and Haifa University professor Ilan Pappe, both avowed supporters of Israel’s end as a Jewish state - the Palestine Student Society also had an Israeli speaker recently: Azmi Bishara, the lone pan-Arabist anti-Zionist Israeli parliamentarian, whose solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute is a bi-national state, code for the end of the Jewish state. With such a range of opinions, who needs an additional speaker from the Israeli embassy or, indeed, an Israeli student society? That is what the Student Union thought and still thinks…

The Israel Student Society invited a speaker, Roy Gilead from Israel’s embassy, to speak on campus on February 22. The Union voted to force the sponsors to disinvite him. Again, a swift intervention from the administration had the Union backtrack and the event can now go on. Still, Kavita Meelu, co-president of the Union, said in a statement, “we have advised the society that the student body… has explicitly expressed that they do not wish for this speaker to be allowed a platform, and therefore will not be actively supporting the society’s event.”

(Excerpt from a National Review article)

Posted by jonjayray on Saturday, February 19, 2005 at 09:41 PM in No particular place to go
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Comments:

Posted by John S Bolton on February 20, 2005, 04:45 AM | #

This is another sign of how far the left has found rationality and any sort of meaningful principles to be an obstruction, which stands in the way of their mindless power-seeking. Please do call them irrational and unprincipled, and let’s not fail to notice how academia is the favored locale for such indulgences of unreason and cynicism. Government money has made this all possible; there is no check on the expatiations but the honor of officials.

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