Stanford bans general public from Robert Spencer lecture
Young America’s Foundation, which is facilitating this event, has this:
Close-minded school administrators have banned the public from attending the event. It seems they are afraid to welcome others onto campus who want to hear from a conservative speaker such as Robert Spencer. If you wish to voice your displeasure with this decision, please contact the student activities and leadership office at 650-725-3104.
Please do call, and politely and courteously remind them that a university ought to be a place where ideas, however unpopular or unwelcome, are considered on their merits. A university should not be a place where only one point of view is allowed, and students are relentlessly indoctrinated into it. But that is what most universities have become these days: indoctrination and recruitment centers for the hard-Left.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Student Union met yesterday evening to plot its response to the “Islamophobe” coming to campus.
As you may already know, Robert Spencer has been invited by the College Republicans to speak on campus on November 14th. Spencer has been widely criticized as an Islamophobe and isn’t a scholarly source on Islam to begin with, so we have been considering what the best way to respond is. MSU will be holding an informal town hall discussion to go over potential action items moving forward, whether that looks like a counter-event to educate, showing up to the Spencer event, etc. Before we move forward, we should also consider what goals we want this response to accomplish. I recognize that these goals might not be the same for everyone, which is why we want to hear people’s opinions. Come out to the meeting at the Markaz at 6pm on Thursday, November 2nd (this is fairly time sensitive so we’re hoping to have a plan asap). Everyone is welcome and if you’re unable to make it, feel free to email me with any ideas you’d like to share!Thanks!
Jana Kholy
MSU Social Justice Director
Here’s the best response, Ms. Kholy: have your group show up and listen quietly. Consider the case being made. Ask questions. Approach the points made on a rational basis; accept them if they’re true, reject them if they’re false — not if they’re inconvenient or unwelcome.
Of course, I doubt the MSU will choose that path. It is much more likely that they will adopt aggrieved victim status, and either stage a protest or a counter-event full of deception, or try to disrupt my event.
What are Stanford administrators and the MSU so afraid of? Why are they treating the imminent arrival on campus of someone who opposes jihad terror and Sharia oppression as if Jack the Ripper were on his way to the Quad? Why is it absolutely certain that if a Guantanamo inmate showed up at Stanford screaming “Allahu akbar! Death to America!” he would be welcomed and celebrated as a hero by the same groups that are in an uproar because I am coming? How did it come to be that the world, on campus as well as among the political and media elites, has been so turned upside down that opposing jihad terror is considered more heinous than espousing it? Find out in my new book Confessions of an Islamophobe, which you can preorder now here.
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