Even though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday oversaw a military parade featuring slogans like �Down with the U.S.� and �Down with Israel,� the Iranian President is invited to speak Monday at Columbia University.
On the other hand, former Jewish Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who was going to speak at the University of California at Davis last week, was uninvited to do so, having been deemed too controversial by faculty members.
You remember Summers. He�s the guy who said biological facts may help explain why there aren�t more women in the highest echelons of science.
So, to clarify, if you say something some consider insulting to women�s brain power, you�re disqualified to speak at a university in the United States of America. But, publicly calling for the destruction of world Jewry, Israel and United States, and actually working toward that goal by developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them � well, that�s fine.
There is obviously something in the water in American and British institutions of higher learning.
In Britain, the universities have become ground zero for attempts, in surreal defiance of the entire concept of the free exchange of ideas, to boycott Israeli universities and academics.
One might conclude from this that Israeli universities were engaged in some awful practices. That they�re torturing people in the basement, perhaps, or publicly flogging people in the quad. One might think that perhaps Israeli universities don�t allow women to study or prevent non-Jews from enrolling. But none of that�s the case. In fact, there are many hundreds of Arab students in Israeli universities, even though at least one university was targeted by a suicide bomber, which, in my view, would give school officials the right to consider keeping out anyone who might want harm the institution or its people.
Let�s see how many Jews and/or Israelis are enrolled in Universities in Saudi Arabia or Iran. But no one is calling for a boycott there.
As far as I can tell this is the first time one nation�s greatest minds have been intentionally snubbed over the righteous indignation of other nations. Not even during the height of the Nazi Holocaust did world academia feel compelled to make its displeasure known by boycotting universities or academics.
On the contrary, in that case, too, it was the Jews � professors and students � who were on the receiving end of a series of boycotts that eventually led to an otherwise �civilized� nation, acquiescing to or actively supporting the murder of six million innocent Jewish men, women and children. And it didn�t take long for the nightmare to go from paper to practice.
In the beginning of April, 1933, a law was passed excluding �non-Aryans� from civil service, including university professors, and a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses began. That same month, the State of Baden expelled all Jewish university teaching assistants, and Freiburg University dismissed all Jewish faculty members.
By the 7th of the month, most Jews holding academic positions in the country had been dismissed. And by the 8th, the burning of �destructive Jewish writings� had been scheduled on campuses for May 10.
On April 25, 1933, a law was passed limiting the number of Jewish students to 1.5 percent of any given institution.
On May 5, the German education minister delivered a violently anti-Jewish speech in the Berlin University auditorium and by November it was announced that financial aid would be denied to Jewish students.
Visiting an American or British university campus these days could give someone an eerie sense of deja vu.
We�ve learned nothing.�
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