A firsthand report: Must not speak ill of Muslims

The following is an email received from a reader, Jonathan Lewin, published with his permission:

"I am a (practicing Jewish) professor of mathematics at Kennesaw State University which is a unit of the University System of Georgia. About two weeks ago, on seeing yet another totally uncritical invitation to an MSA (Muslim Student Association) event (some sort of dinner and fund raiser), I wrote a faculty-wide letter that indicated my sense of unease with the torrent of "hate speech" and even occasional condonation of violence that has been spewed by campus MSAs across the nation. I said that I would be more comfortable if our local MSA told us that they did not go along with the activity of the network of MSAs of which they are a member.

I provided quite a bit of chapter and verse, including some links to U Tube videos and other matter, some of it I had traced beginning with some items that you have published in Tongue Tied.

I did expect (hope) to see a number of expressions of outrage that such activity could be occurring on the nation's campuses. I did hope that people would tell me how appalled they are.

As you can guess, I received, in place of what I hoped to see, a torrent of letters, all sent campus-wide with each one patting the last one on the back, saying how appalled they are with my letter. The material about which I was writing was never mentioned. What was "appalling" was that I dared to raise the issue.

I received a "request" for a meeting by the chief "diversity officer", a request I have ignored.

Then comes part 2 in the saga. A day or two ago, getting wind of a new policy on campus to require ALL full time students (commuting students) to buy expensive meal plans on campus. They said explicitly that "no groups will be exempt from this requirement".

I wrote again to faculty suggesting that this now is an actual diversity issue. There is no food on campus for observant Jews and I suspect that Muslims may be in much the same boat. Presumably, I said, all such people will be expected to pay for the meal plans and then to bring their own brown bags to campus.

This time (perhaps because I included the Muslims????) I got some positive response; except from a professor of "gender and womens' studies" (whatever that means) who wrote to me that she found my letter to be "invasive and oppressive". So now I am an oppressor.

I must say I had a laugh at the feminist's comment: Quite deranged.