Friday, January 28, 2005

Should Hatred Be Accepted in the Name of Academic Freedom?

Apart from the issues of academic freedom raised in this piece, how can any reasonable person, even one who has issues with the United States' economic, political, and military elites, defend the indefensible attacks of September 11, 2001?

How can any college, no matter how devoted to the free interchange of ideas, countenance the appearance on its campus of a person who has called the innocent occupants of the World Trade Center on that fateful day, "Eichmanns"?

Whether these reprehensible opinions are the hollow words of a provocateur searching for his fifteen minutes of fame or the genuine sentiments of one taken with radical chic, they lack credibility.

The entire business raises the question of, to what extent hatred should be countenanced in the name of academic freedom, if at all?

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit put me onto this item.

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