Free Republic

The Islamists have a lot in common with the militant homosexual activists in their aggressive efforts to silence critics who tell the truth about their bad behavior and sinister agenda. Yet another glaring example has emerged. On Thursday, the Thomas More Law Center reported on the shameful capitulation of Boston-area Brandeis University to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR demanded that Brandeis withdraw the offer of an honorary degree to a prominent critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In a slanderous, bullying open letter to Brandeis University, CAIR launched a personal attack...

It's graduation time. Many college students are preparing for their commencement ceremonies. On some campuses, some students are playing a game of what we might call "Dump the Speaker." Conservative speakers chosen to deliver commencement addresses are being howled off campus by leftist student organizations and faculty as well. It's either a left-wing speaker -- or none. Rutgers University recently faced this by inviting Condoleezza Rice and refused to budge. But Brandeis University has just knuckled under to student and faculty protests over its announced speaker, author Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was disinvited. You'd think a human rights advocate would...

“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.

Today, Brandeis University announced that it was reversing its decision to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, following complaints from faculty, an online petition, and pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which represents nobody but is flush with Saudi cash. The biases of the academy are well known: Robert Spencer is in no danger of getting an honorary degree any time soon, nor Douglas Murray. Nevertheless, in this instance, Brandeis University is stiffing someone who's black, feminist and from Somalia. Which makes their decision the most explicit recognition yet that, in the hierarchy of identity-group politics, Islam...

Former Muslim and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has issued a statement in response to the action by Brandeis University in withdrawing an honorary degree they were going to present to her at the 2014 commencement ceremony. Ali called out the school's administration who would "so deeply betray its own founding principles."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali released the following statement in response to Brandeis University's decision to rescind its offer of an honorary degree. The statement speaks for itself: “Yesterday Brandeis University decided to withdraw an honorary degree they were to confer upon me next month during their Commencement exercises. 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...

BOSTON (AP) — Brandeis (BRAN’-dys) University in Massachusetts has decided not to award an honorary degree to a woman who has made comments critical of Islam. The decision follows complaints from students, faculty members and others about honoring Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali (ah-YAHN’ HUR’-see AH’-ee). In a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine, Ali was quoted saying that “we are at war with Islam” and urged that Muslims be “defeated.”

BOSTON (AP) — After taking heat from some of its own over a decision to grant an honorary degree to an advocate for Muslim women who has made comments critical of Islam, Brandeis University withdrew the honor Tuesday night. The university said in a statement that Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no longer receive the honorary degree, which it had planned to award her at the May 18 commencement. Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she...

Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. ... Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for the university to honor "such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women's rights, who has put her life at risk for those values."

After seeing an op-ed headlined, “The Pro-Israel Tent ‘Doesn’t Matter If It Can’t Hold Disagreement,” written by my Brandeis classmates Eli Philip and Catie Stewart which appeared in a Philadelphia Jewish paper and several J Street online sources, I feel compelled to provide much needed additional information and context, so that readers can determine for themselves what is the matter, if anything, with our – and others – pro-Israel tent. In their article, Philip and Stewart describe an incident that occurred at a pro-Israel event on campus earlier in the semester, during which Captain Barak Raz, a former spokesperson for...

Brandeis University on Monday announced the suspension of its decade-old partnership with Al-Quds University following a recent Nazi-style rally at the Palestinian school in Jerusalem. At the Nov. 5 rally, Al-Quds students wore black military gear, carried fake automatic weapons, gave the Nazi salute, and surrounded the main square of their campus with banners depicting images of “martyred” suicide bombers. “While Brandeis has an unwavering commitment to open dialogue on difficult issues, we are also obliged to recognize intolerance when we see it, and we cannot—and will not—turn a blind eye to intolerance,” Brandeis said in a press release. “As...

Brandeis University is facing criticism from students and faculty members after refusing to distance itself from an event recently held on the campus of its Palestinian partner school that critics decried as a “Nazi-style” rally. Brandeis, the nation’s most well known Jewish university, partners with the Palestinian Al Quds University, where students held a military rally on Tuesday of last week. Groups of Al Quds students dressed in black military gear and armed with fake automatic weapons marched on the school’s campus while waving flags and raising the traditional Nazi salute, according to pictures first posted by Middle East analyst...

"The concept of a 'monopoly on force' might sound foreign or even frightening to Americans that take great pride in our revolutionary beginnings," Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz wrote in a Huffington Post citizen disarmament advocacy piece, "but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including the United States." “To back up this assertion,” I explained in a GUNS Magazine Rights Watch column, “he cites, ‘German political economist and sociologist Max Weber.’" “What he doesn't cite,” I elaborated, “is Weber's support for approving Article 48 into the Weimar constitution, establishing "emergency powers" to...

The following quote is in the front pages of Milton and Rose Friedman's book, "Free To Choose". It is from Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928) The quote is relevant to the political debate in this country today. I want to hear a range of opinions about Brandeis' ideas. The quote: "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment...

Anti-Zionists at Brandeis have taken their turn at trying to silence free speech, one year after California students silenced Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. This time, Kadima Knesset Member Avi Dichter was their target and was called a “war criminal.” Members of Brandeis University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (BSJP) boisterously halted a university panel discussion of six visiting members of the Israeli Knesset Monday evening, shouting for the arrest of “war criminals." Security personnel peacefully escorted them out of the hall. Approximately a dozen students accused Dichter, former head of the Israel Security Agency, of torture and being responsible for...

Bigotry at Brandeis? Don Irvine, April 27, 2010 The Tea Party Movement apparently has profs at Brandeis University so upset that they decided to hold a seminar about the movement under the heading of New Right-Wing Radicalism, A Transatlantic Perspective complete with swastikas on posters promoting the event. Never mind that Brandeis is a Jewish university, what really matters apparently is that the Tea Party is a threat to the liberal orthodoxy so prevalent at the school that Center for European and German Studies felt it necessary to link them to Neo-Nazis. All the while the mainstream media has ignored...

4/24/2009 Michele McPhee - will be there to PROTEST this terrorist. Bill Ayers visit to Brandeis University.

Former radical William Ayers will get a chance to speak on a Massachusetts college campus after all. Two months after Boston College canceled a scheduled appearance by Ayers, the onetime member of the 1960s militant antiwar organization the Weather Underground will be at Brandeis University next Thursday and will be welcomed by students and school administrators. "This is about freedom of educational opportunity," said Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon. "The university has made it clear that it is not going to bar the talk despite the controversial nature of the speaker." Ayers will speak about "lessons learned from the antiwar movement,"...

In another coup for Brandeis film studies chairwoman Alice Kelikian, adult film star Sasha Grey is set to visit the Waltham campus this month. The 21-year-old porn star is coming to screen Steven Soderbergh's new film, "The Girlfriend Experience," in which Grey plays - wait for it - a prostitute. The film, which won raves at a test screening at the Sundance Film Festival, is having its world premiere April 29 at the Tribeca Film Festival. Grey will be at Brandeis the very next night, and will do a Q&A with film industry analyst and Brandeis alum Scott Feinberg. Grey...

Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz issued a public mea culpa to the university community yesterday, admitting that he mishandled last week's announcement about the planned closing of the school's Rose Art Museum. "To quote President Obama, 'I screwed up,' " Reinharz wrote in a letter e-mailed to the faculty and students. In yesterday's attempt to quell a public outcry, Reinharz walked a fine semantic line, saying in his letter that "the museum will remain open" and "be more fully integrated into the university's central educational mission." In reality, the Rose will eventually cease to operate as a public art museum....