Thursday, September 11, 2014

Campuses Kept Shifting Left--Latest Emails From Brandeis Faculty



As the season of graduation of seniors from college and commencement addresses enters full steam
Many students facing student debts, feathering back to nest and wondering where is the American Dream?
There appears to be a very disturbing trend of closing access to any rational discourse
Vocal minorities demanding speakers and degree awards follow the left wing view without remorse
Rutgers under pressure from pickets and sit-ins of the smallest of the mental small
Folded under pressure to cancel Condi Rice, a cowardly act of a University President who would not stand tall
Brandeis named after the first Jewish Justice who was the utmost champion of free speech
A university so named one would think rational debate on ideas would encourage and teach
A nail in the coffin of academic freedom driven without shame by a vocal small number of closed minds faculty
Pressured by CAIR, Brandeis folded and withdrew its honorary degree from an outspoken critic of radical Islam and defender of Muslim women’s rights-- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
At Haverford after protest again by a number of students and faculty against selection of the speaker for commencement address
The former Chancellor of Cal withdrew becoming another example of speech suppressed
His replacement to his credit tore into the students as “arrogant” and “immature”
Anyone not linked arm and arm or joined at the hip with their views is someone impure
A mind is a terrible thing to waste and without challenges of ideas it withers and dies
Surrounded by thoughts exactly the same, cut off from others different that might question and defy
If so wasted as seems to be the increasing PC trend and contra ideas to suppress
How do our young minds ever develop the skills to difficult issues address?
What a speaker at commencement says while students sit waiting in the warm sun
Fade away in terms of memory almost as quickly as soon as the speech has begun
But the images and symbols of any speaker forced by a vocal minority to withdraw
Will last forever on the tombstone of academic freedom where free speech is no longer the driving law.
Now after months of dithering and delay
Our President has put his toughest rhetoric against ISIS on display
We learn of emails of the faculty at Brandeis calling the Israelis for Hamas rockets trying to resist
From a terrorist group that like ISIS denies Israel’s right to exist
Academic freedom is being just another word where this only one academic viewpoint or design
At Brandeis and so many college classrooms
It is further and further left regardless of the issues over our security loom.
Justice Brandeis must be weeping in his grave
Over his namesake’s faculty’s rants and raves.
© September 11, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
Alaskanpoet for Hire, Poems to Admire
Poet Extraordinaire Beyond Compare
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