Monday, March 08, 2010

York University takes one small step...

As I have pointed out before, the defenders of free speech need to remember that it is wrong for those of us who are not government, those of us who are just involved in daily interactions and in control of our own rightful spaces, to allow people to misuse our shared freedom and to pollute our shared space in order to disrupt others' freedom to discuss the issues of the day. So I am happy to read that York University suspends student running anti-Semitic Website.

Maybe the alumni refusing to give money to York are having an effect. When one student fundraiser recently called me, he had a prepared speech explaining that it was only a small troublesome minority at York who are antisemitic (sound familiar?). I pointed out that whatever the case, it is the administration's siding with the thugs who shut down pro-Israel speech that insures (among other reasons) York will not be seeing my money.

But maybe York has now taken the first in a series of necessary steps. When the University sends an official apology to Frank Dimant, Daniel Pipes, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Walid Shoebat, Rev. Majed El Shafie, and Faytene Kryskow, and invites them to York, all expenses paid, to give well-publicized public lectures, I will start to be impressed.

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