I believe this has more to do with cowardice than with political correctness.
Brandeis is a Jewish university.
For them to confer any honor on an anti-Mohamedan is an invitation to every MoHamHead suicide bomber to blow up the university.
So far America has been spared the homicide bombers that scourge the Middle East & Central/SW Asia.
The first time a suicide bomber kills civilians on American soil or blows up a public building it will be open season on muzzies here, and they know it. Just the display of beards or burkas will be like screaming “Allahu Akbar!!” at any nearby “infidel”.
And here in the belly of the `Great Satan’, the “infidels” are the supermajority and they have guns. This isn’t Egypt or Pakistan.
That said, it’s my opinion that the Brandeis administration is probably more afraid of losing CAIR/Saudi petrobucks than they are of Omar & Achmed going splodeydopes on them.
A shameful retraction on their part. After all, though we “infidels” admire Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she is an atheistic feminist and isn’t that almost goddesslike in the liberals’ world? Oh - I keep forgetting the anti-Islam about her.