Excerpt from a report by law professor Alan M. Dershowitz:
"Should students who conspire to "shut down" an invited speaker with whom they disagree be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of conspiracy to disturb a meeting? That is the question roiling the University of California.
The facts are not really in dispute. Israel's Ambassador to the United States—a moderate academic named Michael Oren—was invited to present a talk at the University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Islamic hate speech against Israel.
The Muslim Student Union organized an effort, in the words of one of its leaders, to "shut down" Oren's speech—that is to prevent Oren from expressing his views and to stop the audience who came to hear him from listening to them.
Ultimately, that effort failed and Oren managed to deliver his speech, after many long and sustained disruptions, but if the Muslim Student Union had gotten its way, Oren would have been shut down completely.
The University, which is a state institution, had a constitutional obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of Oren's audience to hear what he had to say, and the state prosecutor has a legal obligation to deter future conspiracies to censor controversial speakers, by criminally prosecuting those students who conspired to deny other students their First Amendment rights.
It is shocking therefore to see who has lined up behind the students who set out to censor Ambassador Oren. Two prominent leaders of the American Civil Liberties have joined with radical Muslims and other extremists in an effort to pressure the local District Attorney to drop misdemeanor charges against 11 student censors.
Ultimately a jury will decide whether the students conspired to "shut down" Oren's talk, or whether they were merely "protesting" the content of his talk. The evidence will clearly show a conspiracy to stop Oren from speaking.
Why then have the ACLU leaders distorted the facts and conveyed a totally misleading impression of what took place at the University of California? The answer seems clear. These leaders don't like Israel and they support the censorship of pro-Israel views. They would never take the same position if the shoe had been on the other foot: If the speaker were from Hamas and the students trying to shut him down were pro-Israel.
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4 comments:
The ACLU's actions are also not a surprise. While they claim to support free speech, their actions demonstrate that their claim is nothing more than an attempt to hide their true agenda, which is entirely leftist.
(Leftists lying and obfuscating? Say it ain't so! )
1930s: Leftwing fascists shut down free speech and attack the Jews. In Germany.
2011: Leftwing fascists shut down free speech and attack the Jews. In California.
And they say that history doesn't repeat itself. ;)
History doesn't repeat itself. But it often rhymes. ;-)
Totaly irresponsible university officials like small time dictators They need to be removed from their offices of coruption
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