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Our campuses, which pose as guardians of free speech, are in fact the reverse, ruthlessly oppressing Conservative and pro-American views. From author and Ph. D Phyllis Chesler:
In my opinion, American campuses have bred a new and diabolical McCarthyism. Academics now have the right to teach brazen lies, and they expect to be protected in the name of “free speech.” Worse, when an academic tries to teach the truth—the truth—about Israel, or about America, or about Jews, they will be ostracized, bullied, demonized, and accused (by the new McCarthyites) of leading a McCarthyite witch-hunt against left wing freedom of expression. This, in my view, is really the censorship of any view that does not conform to a left-wing and anti-American view.
The first amendment and free speech is very important. But, professors especially have a responsibility to teach the difference between a truth and a lie. Too many have abdicated this responsibility. This is a point I tried to make to the President of Duke University, a university that houses my archives and whose welfare I fear I may have endangered by my strong pro-Israel stand. Not a single faculty member at Duke challenged Duke’s decision to allow the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazi Party, a distinguished place to meet, giving it academic credibility. [See this post for more on Duke University and the Palestine Solidarity Movement—ed.]
...This is my third speech at Barnard and Columbia on this subject in the last fourteen months. On November 8th, 2003, I spoke at Barnard on what was the eve of kristallnact. What happened was far from pleasant and I have written about it widely. In short: The assembled feminists, mainly women of color, loved my speech, sighed and clapped and laughed and groaned. But they went crazy and became menacing when, in response to a completely out-of-context question about “where I stool on the question of the women of Palestine,” which I took to be a question about where I stood on the question of Apartheid, I said that Islam was the largest practioner of gender and religious Apartheid on the face of the earth. The place went crazy. “What about the humiliation at the checkpoints?” “Not as serious as being murdered by your brother or your father because you want to go to college, or choose your own husband.”
...WHAT MUST BE DONE?
Academics must tell the truth. We must start teaching that Jews and Americans do not cause anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, and that both Jews and Israel have been the targets of massive hate campaigns against them. Academics must monitor this campaign and get it to stop.
Academics and intellectuals must stand up proudly and loudly, and say that Zionism is not racism or colonialism or Apartheid; that it is the liberation movement of the oppressed and genocidally persecuted Jewish people.
We must fight back, not appease or justify the terrorist who would like to bomb us all back into the Arabian 7th Century.
Academics must take back the campuses. We must civilize and de-politicize them.
I am especially interested in restoring campus civility and freedom of truth speech in America.
Twenty first-century western intellectuals must become a force for democracy. We must oppose dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush liberty and the rights of people.
