By this action Brandeis University dishonors its own founder, a lawyer regarded as incorruptible, and who went to become a very well regarded Supreme Court Justice.
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| Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Facebook photo |
Louis Dembitz Brandeis was a crusader for social justice and freedom of speech, and he would have been horrified at the sight of academics - who are supposed to be guided by the highest principles of justice and scientific enquiry - betray those principles under the onslaught of an online mob and cancel the award of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi. Hirsi has been risking her life for many years in order to speak out against Islam's violence and oppression of women.
Silence at this decision from women's rights activists is deafening.
To add to Brandeis University's betrayal of academic principles, is the fact that it was founded by a Jewish man - and Jews have suffered and continue to suffer because of Islam's fundamental hatred, oppression, and violence against Jews.
Brandeis University did not have moral objections at associating itself with Al Quds University in Jerusalem, a Palestinian University that is a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Brandeis University was shamed into suspending that association when they were confronted with photographic evidence of students marching and making the Nazi salute. It's hard to believe that in the internet age Brandeis academics would be unaware of the Nazi nature of Arab nationalism and of Al Quds' own reputation of virulent anti-Semitism.
Liberal Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora continue to side with the enemy in order to fit in with the liberal class current historical and moral distortion. They would be horrified to stand up for their principles and be shunned by the same mob that demonizes Israel and turns a blind eye to Islam's oppression of women and minorities.
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UPDATE April 10: See Ayaan Hirsi Ali's response further on this page
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| Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a well known writer |
Brandeis University said Tuesday that it would not award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a campaigner for women’s rights and a fierce critic of Islam, who has called the religion “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.”
“We cannot overlook that certain of her past statements are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values,” the university said in a statement released eight days after it had announced that Hirsi Ali and four other people would be honored at its commencement on May 18.
The university said that the president of Brandeis, Frederick M. Lawrence, discussed the matter with Hirsi Ali on Tuesday, and that she “is welcome to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue.”
The New York Times reported that after thousands of people signed a petition against honoring Hirsi Ali, the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter to Dr. Lawrence, referring to her as a “notorious Islamophobe.”
“She is one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group, said in an interview on Tuesday. “I don’t assign any ill will to Brandeis. I think they just kind of got fooled a little bit.”
In its statement, Brandeis said, “For all concerned, we regret that we were not aware of” Hirsi Ali’s record of anti-Islam statements.
Hirsi Ali, who was forced to undergo genital mutilation when she was a girl, moved to the Netherlands as a young woman, and was later elected to the Dutch Parliament. She wrote the screenplay for “Submission,” a 2004 film critical of the treatment of Muslim women. Shortly after its release, the director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered on an Amsterdam street by a radical Islamist, who pinned to the victim’s body a threat to kill Hirsi Ali as well.
In her book, Infidel, she wrote: “By declaring our Prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny. The Prophet Muhammad attempted to legislate every aspect of life. By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims supressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mind-set of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves.”
After the 9/11 terror strikes, she wrote, a Dutch friend told her that the perpetrators were "a lunatic fringe" within Islam. "I walked into the office thinking, 'I have to wake these people up.' ...The Dutch had forgotten that it was possible for people to stand up and wage war, destroy property, imprison, kill, impose laws of virtue because of the call of God. That kind of religion hadn't been present in Holland for centuries. It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West. I knew that a vast mass of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam.”
Several months ago, Brandeis severed ties with Hamas-linked Al Quds University after a "Nazi-style" rally outraged students on the partner campus. The university has campuses in Jerusalem and its environs.
Photos of the disturbing rally were posted on Tom Gross's blog November 6, and have aroused considerable controversy.
The Washington Free Beacon reported earlier that Brandeis University, the world's best-known Jewish institution of higher education, has partnered with the Hamas institute as a means of allegedly holding "dialogue."
Source - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179439#.U0VC-puPKM9
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| Al Quds Univ Nazi rally - Photo Tom Gross |
Photo on the right shows one of Palestinian Al Quds University in Jerusalem, rallies, with students making the Nazi salute. Brandeis University was associated with this hotbed of anti-Semitism for a long time and only very reluctantly it decided to sever ties with Al Quds. For a while it continued to defend their association with Nazi Arabs Jihadists. Photo from TOM GROSS website
Brandeis University continued for a while to defend their association with Palestinian University holding Nazi rallies.
THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON - November 19, 2013 - The Jewish university’s refusal to condemn the rally when approached last week by the Washington Free Beacon sparked a furious reaction from students, teachers, and pro-Israel activists on campus.
Al Quds officials initially distanced themselves from the rally, which was organized by the student branch of the terror organization Islamic Jihad. However, after news of the rally spread through the Jewish and Israeli media, Al Quds publicly lashed out at the Free Beacon and other outlets, labeling them “Jewish extremists.”
Brandeis had initially refused to comment on the rally, declining multiple Free Beacon requests for comment last week. This silence sparked a pitched controversy on campus, eventually leading the school’s president to issue a short statement promising to investigate the rally.
However, some critics said the statement did not go far enough in its condemnation of the rally’s anti-Semitic and anti Israel displays. They demanded that the school immediately cease its partnership with Al Quds, which has come under fire for anti-Israel activities in the past.
Brandeis administrators quietly blamed the Free Beacon for the controversy and even lashed out at the website in postings on the Facebook. “The paper reporting [and promoting] the issue has a clear slant,” Andrew Flagel, Brandeis’ senior vice president for students and enrollment, said. “This was not a University sanctioned event there, and it seems that Brandeis is being linked to such an event for shock value. I’m disgusted by the event but also by media trying to make names for themselves in this way.”
Read more:
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Freedom of speech OK for Brandeis U. as long as it's anti-Israel but not anti-Islam
Brandeis University student accuses the university of hypocrisy, and of having honored anti-Israel individuals in the past, and hosted many other anti-Israel speakers on campus.
Read more http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179456#.U0Vf-ZuPKM8
As Lori Lowenthal Marcus notes, Brandeis University has in recent years bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who called the creation of Israel as a Jewish state “a mistake” and who attacked Israel for ethnic cleansing and for causing “terrible peril in the world.” Brandeis has also honored Desmond Tutu, who compared Israel to Hitler, attacked the “Jewish lobby” as too “powerful” and “scary,” and complained of the “Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.”
Read more -
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/note-supporters-brandeis_786708.html
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/brandeis-caves-to-pressure-withdraws-honor-to-ayaan-hirsi-ali/2014/04/09/
Read more -
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/note-supporters-brandeis_786708.html
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/brandeis-caves-to-pressure-withdraws-honor-to-ayaan-hirsi-ali/2014/04/09/
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BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY - Founded in 1948, Brandeis University is named for the late Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the distinguished associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Louis Dembitz Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents from Bohemia, who raised him in a secular home. He attended Harvard Law School, graduating at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the law school's history.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the Supreme Court. However, his nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible. . . [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court."
He was eventually confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22 on June 1, 1916,—21 Republican Senators and one Democratic Senator (Francis G. Newlands of Nevada) voted against his nomination—and became one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court.
His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court. (Wikipedia)
His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court. (Wikipedia)
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali's statement:
I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which
implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision. On the contrary, I
was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me—just a few
hours before issuing a public statement—to say that such a decision had been
made.
When Brandeis approached me with the offer of an honorary degree, I accepted
partly because of the institution’s distinguished history; it was founded in
1948, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, as a co-educational,
nonsectarian university at a time when many American universities still imposed
rigid admission quotas on Jewish students.
I assumed that Brandeis intended to honor me for my work as a defender of the rights of women against abuses that are often religious in origin. For over a decade, I have spoken out against such practices as female genital mutilation, so-called ‘honor killings,’ and applications of Sharia Law that justify such forms of domestic abuse as wife beating or child beating.
I assumed that Brandeis intended to honor me for my work as a defender of the rights of women against abuses that are often religious in origin. For over a decade, I have spoken out against such practices as female genital mutilation, so-called ‘honor killings,’ and applications of Sharia Law that justify such forms of domestic abuse as wife beating or child beating.
Part of my work has
been to question the role of Islam in legitimizing such abhorrent practices. So
I was not surprised when my usual critics, notably the Council of
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), protested against my being honored in this
way.
What did surprise me was the behavior of Brandeis. Having spent many months planning for me to speak to its students at Commencement, the university yesterday announced that it could not “overlook certain of my past statements,” which it had not previously been aware of.
What did surprise me was the behavior of Brandeis. Having spent many months planning for me to speak to its students at Commencement, the university yesterday announced that it could not “overlook certain of my past statements,” which it had not previously been aware of.
Yet my critics have long
specialized in selective quotation – lines from interviews taken out of context
– designed to misrepresent me and my work. It is scarcely credible that Brandeis
did not know this when they initially offered me the degree.
What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles.
What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles.
The
‘spirit of free expression’ referred to in the Brandeis statement has been
stifled here, as my critics have achieved their objective of preventing me from
addressing the graduating Class of 2014. Neither Brandeis nor my critics
knew or even inquired as to what I might say. They simply wanted me to be
silenced. I regret that very much.
Not content with a public disavowal, Brandeis has invited me ‘to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.’ Sadly, in words and deeds, the university has already spoken its piece. I have no wish to ‘engage’ in such one-sided dialogue.
Not content with a public disavowal, Brandeis has invited me ‘to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.’ Sadly, in words and deeds, the university has already spoken its piece. I have no wish to ‘engage’ in such one-sided dialogue.
I can only wish
the Class of 2014 the best of luck—and hope that they will go forth to be better
advocates for free expression and free thought than their alma mater.
I take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported me and my work on behalf of oppressed woman and girls everywhere.
I take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported me and my work on behalf of oppressed woman and girls everywhere.
Source:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ayaan-hirsi-ali-speaks_786719.html
Ayan Hirsi Ali Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali/10150101839560317
Her books
https://www.google.ca/#q=Ayan+hirsi+ali+books
Her articles
http://www.aei.org/scholar/ayaan-hirsi-ali/
Louis Dembitz Brandeis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brandeis
Brandeis University web page claiming "social justice" as one of their ideals
(now defined for them by an online mob)
http://www.brandeis.edu/about/history.html
Al Quds university - until recently associated with Brandeis University.
Photos showing demonstrations of students making the Nazi salute and honoring terrorists as heroes
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001406.html
Tom Gross Mideast Media Analysis - Photos of the Arab Nazi rally
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001406.html
Tom Gross' pictures of latest Nazi Arab rally at Al Quds University.
(Islamophobia literally means "fear of Islam" - Why should they object to people's fear of them? What with all the decapitations and widespread terror and carnage?)
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001440.html
Implacable Muslim hatred of Jews - Starts with the Koran itself
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Jerry_Gordon/Implacable_Muslim_Hatred_of_Jews/
THE NAZI ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT
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