Shades of 1938: Colleges quiet a critic of Islam
Friday, November 27th 2009, 4:00 AM
Last week's last-minute cancellation at Princeton and Columbia Universities of a lecture by Arab feminist Nonie Darwish - an author who has strongly denounced Islamic intolerance and jihadism - brings to mind American universities' unwillingness to protect campus free speech rights for opponents of Nazism during the 1930s.
Shame on these supposed bastions of free speech for rolling over rather than courageously defending academic freedom.
Princeton's reason for shutting down the scheduled presentation by Darwish strikingly resembles those given by Queens College's president in April 1938 when he withdrew an invitation to anti-Nazi German Jewish exile Ernst Toller to speak on campus.
For its part, Columbia says it cancelled Darwish's talk for a technical reason, because her trip was planned without sponsorship from any recognized Columbia group. I have no doubt, however, that the university could have found a way to accommodate this speaker if it had wanted to.
The parallels between Darwish and Toller are powerful. Both were made pariahs in their homelands and came to the United States seeking freedom. Darwish, who grew up in Gaza and in Egypt, became a staunch critic of radical Islam. She wrote a book titled "Now They Call Me Infidel." Toller called his autobiography, published in the United States in 1934, "I Was a German." The Nazis burned his books and confiscated almost all of his property.
In both cases, these challenges to authority made the speakers too "controversial" to appear on some campuses here.
In Darwish's case, after the Princeton invitation was issued and accepted, a campus Muslim student group protested - and the sponsoring student organizations then withdrew their invitation. This was met with the university administration's approval - or at least its silence. The university apparently would rather not have the headache of having to worry about bad headlines.
Toller's case followed a similar pattern. In April 1938, after Germany's Jews had suffered years of savage street beatings, expulsion from the professions and university faculties, Toller was to speak at Queens College. The college's president, Paul Klapper, suddenly cancelled the renowned playwright's lecture, citing opposition from faculty members and students. Klapper claimed that Toller was an "ardent propagandist." Translation: His opposition to Nazism was too pronounced.
Later, there was a publicity storm - and Klapper responded. He rescinded the cancellation of Toller's lecture, calling the controversy "an unfortunate misunderstanding." Toller ultimately delivered his talk to a capacity audience of 600.
It was a victory for free expression and a defeat, however small, for the forces of totalitarianism.
Those who do not understand this history - and the shameful way our institutions of higher learning welcomed Nazis, while turning away many of their strongest opponents - are doomed to repeat it with respect to the radical Islamist threat today.
It is chilling that prominent American universities in our day and age provide platforms for virulently anti-Semitic speakers like Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who threatens to wipe Israel off the map, while they shut down lectures by opponents of Islamic jihadists.
Stephen H. Norwood, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, is author of "The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment