NYP: KEEP THE ACADEMICS FAR AWAY - The IFC message should be America is a rare force for good.

New York Post ^ | August 22, 2005 | CANDACE DE RUSSY

[OESY]

...In April, the IFC designated nine universities to provide initial programs, with the goal of "[making] the Center a... 'Public Square' on hallowed ground." "The character of a university," the IFC intoned, "allows for this form of 'sacred space'... in which sensitive, controversial and provocative subjects can be candidly explored, yet in a manner that does not generate political distraction."...

[NYU] President... [extolled] today's campuses "as 'modern sanctuaries [committed to] free, unbridled and ideologically unconstrained discourse.'"

Hello. Campuses today are indeed "sanctuaries"— but almost exclusively for scholars of liberal-left-radical persuasion. Their "unconstrained discourse" is overwhelming that of rank ideologues— neo-Marxists, multiculturalists who have rejected an American identity, militant feminists and... anti-American and anti-Israel ideologues.

The majority of professors and administrators are no doubt capable of organizing non-politicized, distinguished programs. But these "moderates" are regularly overshadowed and intimidated....

And campus ideologues will surely assert their right to air their partisan views at Ground Zero, a bully pulpit extraordinaire if ever there was one. No doubt they are salivating at the prospect of shaping the content and tone of the "debate" in a facility that will literally overshadow the 9/11 memorial.

Picture visitors to Ground Zero moving from the memorial to IFC lecture halls. And then imagine the perorations of the following (a barest sampling) of influential radical professors, who hale from the very universities to which the IFC has assigned programming....

Few in their ranks unequivocally denounce the terrorists responsible for 9/11, or the extremist Islamist ideology that spawned them. Indeed, so disconnected from reality are such ideologues that some of them spout our enemies' views, while we are at war.

Surely these are the poorest candidates possible to celebrate the valor of the police, firefighters and others who lost their lives trying to save innocent victims at the Twin Towers....

[yankeedame]

"allows for this form of 'sacred space'... in which sensitive, controversial and provocative subjects can be candidly explored, yet in a manner that does not generate political distraction."...

[NYU] President... [extolled] today's campuses "as 'modern sanctuaries [committed to] free, unbridled and ideologically unconstrained discourse.'"

What? Suddenly NYC doesn't have any bars?

[Syberyenta]

LOL

Aren't these loonies smacked down yet? pfui!