Daniel Pipes gave a speech today to a student group, despite every effort to stop him.
First the administration, caving to threats of violence, initially cancelled the speech. Then, showing great courage, they decided to let it go ahead after all. Then, York was forced to bring in tons of riot police in hopes of avoiding a reprise of the Concordia fiasco. It seems to have been averted, but not without incident. Leftists “occupied” a floor of the administration building in attempt to get the university to cancel the speech. And after Pipes left, someone called in a bomb threat to the building.
Freedom of speech means freedom for speech you don’t agree with to go ahead as well. When will the Left get it?
York University could have waffled and cancelled Pipes’ speech, but it didn’t. It took a stand for freedom of speech and against threats and intimidation. And the students who invited Pipes could have caved as well, but they didn’t. Kudos all around (except to the idiotarians who felt it necessary to try to shut down Pipes’s speech).
He also spoke later that night at a shul in Toronto. There were about a dozen police and security guards and they frisked the people and user metal detector wands at the door.
The speech he give focused on the War on Terror – he said it should a War on Militant Islam, the Arab-Israeli conflict and issues on campuses. The said that Arabs don’t really accept Israel so peace treatys have to wait until they do and they his Campus Watch is just starting but could help change things on campus.
Other than his sometimes use of Islamists instead of militant Muslisms I don’t see what the complaints could be about.
The Arabs say Israel shouldn’t exist and neither should any speech advocating for Israel. I think we have a pattern here. Of course, if they get their way, the next step will be to outlaw Judaism and any speech in favor of Judaism.
“Islamist” is the general word used in academic circles to refer to extremist, militant Islam (as opposed to “Islamic” which means someone or something of the Muslim religion). I don’t really see anything wrong with Daniel Pipes using that word.
But of course, none of that is the point. Netanyahu wasn’t planning hate speech in Montreal either. A group just decided they didn’t like him, therefore he shouldn’t speak.
The problem is that it is Pipes who makes threats and intimidates by whipping up support for racial profiling and the harrassment of academics who are critical of American foreign policy:
“Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the
diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do
Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and
immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a
scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues and temples.” –Daniel Pipes
Yeah –Pipes is far from being a “concerned citizen” commentator,as he occasionally portrays himself. His father, Richard Pipes, made a career out of being a hard-line anti-leftist. Daniel, folloiwing in his fathers footsteps, is making his career against a different percieved adversary. There are books to sel, lectures to give. It’s not all about the Bling Bling, but there’s a lot of that there.
Over at Ismail Royer’s blog site (which is no longer updated) you can catch a bit on Pipes’ attempt to stop Hanan Ashrawi from speaking in Colorado. In the hate-and-venom-filled Israeli-Palestinian polemics, most people respect freedom of speech, and other niceties of liberalism, only when they like the speech
Peter — a little hysterical, nu?
Again, I don’t follow.
Is the discussion about the correctness of Pipes’ positions — or is it about banning him from expressing them?
If the latter, then it’s hard to understand what Pipes’ father’s positions, or even Pipes’ apparent attempt to “stop Hanan Ashrawi from speaking”, have to do with anything. Any such attempt would obviously be wrong; a successful attempt (I assume there wasn’t) would need dealing with. Neither make it okay to cancel Pipes’ speech, unless of course Pipes’ (or, for that matter, Ashrawi’s) being allowed to speak is conditional on saying the right things.
No, it’s about uddnerstanding his motivations and examining his credibility. It’s like reading a favourable review of GWB environmental record in the National Review. Not surprising; that’s what the NatRev is there for. It doesn’t necessarily mean that GWB’s envronmental record is particulalry good.
Pipes plays a role in the punditry ecosystem. And he’s certainly a Hell of a lot sharper than Steve Emerson (the pellagra-stricken poor man’s Daniel Pipes). But Bill Safire never said anything nice about Clinton, and Ted Ralls never says anything nice about Bush. Pipes, a monomaniac pundit, is the same in his area of obsession.
By all means, let him speak, and Pat Buchanan, and Al Sharpton. The real question is, is it worth your spending your scarce time listening?
So don’t listen! Nobody’s compelling you to! That’s the whole point here. In a free society, Daniel Pipes, Hanan Ashrawi, and Benjamin Netanyahu all have the right to speak unimpeded. And you have every right to listen or not listen, to agree or criticize.
Nobody has the right to try to stop someone from speaking by rioting (in the case of Concordia) or by phoning in anonymous threats of violence (as in the cases of UQAM and York).
No, it’s about uddnerstanding his motivations and examining his credibility.
Oh. I think these are different conversations, then. I was reacting to York’s cancelling, then uncancelling his speech. I’d have to spend a bit of time reading what Daniel Pipes has to say, and what others say in response, if I were to engage with his ideas. Haven’t done that, much.
Isn’t the irony that Pipes hunts university professors whose views he doesn’t like and prevents their free speech?
Isn’t the irony that Pipes’s organization hunts down university professors whose views it doesn’t like and shuts down their free speech rights?
Wondering/Me:
Read his site’s mission statement; their goal isn’t to censor, but rather to make sure that there is integrety in discussion, and that both sides are heard
How does he shut down their speech?
Give examples. Cite sources.
Because otherwise, you’re just blowing smoke.
Ikram, yes my comment was a little hysterical since I think that Israel’s destruction is unlikely and that Israel will eventually triumph over rejectionism/antisemitism. Also, the Jewish people are in a far better position to fight antisemitism today than they were in the 1930’s and 1940’s. I do believe thought, that if Israel was destroyed, the war against the Jews would not cease.
You say that Pipe’s father “made a career out of being a
hard-line anti-leftist.” I’d like to point out that Ashrawi’s father was a founding member of the PLO, and I’ve heard he was also a member of a Lebanese Nazi party back in the day (though I am not sure if this is true).
Also, from what I’ve read of Pipe’s writing on Ashrawi’s visit to Colorado College, Pipe’s only wanted the college to provide a forum for an an alternative view of what caused 9/11. What I find particulary offensive about Ashrawi’s views on 9/11 is that she more or less blames it on the Jews, however, she does it in a much more sophisticated way compared to Amiri Baraka.
Incidentally, I was curious about the focus, so I surfed on over to the Campus-Watch Web site.
I wasn’t able to find the part where he names and berates university professor, the alleged portion which is what I assume Wondering Me is referring to in his inflated hyperbole (“hunts down university professors whose views it doesn’t like and shuts down their free speech rights”: apparently public criticism of people is the same as hunting them down). There’s a Survey of Institutions, which I thought would be it, but that turns out to mostly be a collection of links to previously-published op-eds and news articles, on the couple of links I did follow in that section.
The only place I managed to find him naming names was the Solidarity with Apologists portion. Those are the names of those who wrote him and asked to be listed on the Web site. What was interesting there was the number of Jewish names among them. (Another example that flies in the face of the racist ideology that tries to position Jews as either unconditional defenders of everything Israel ever does, or anti-Jewish-self-determination people who are therefore “rejected” by the Jewish “mainstream”.)
So, for inept Web surfers like me, where do I find Pipes’ list of outting-people-I-disagree-with? Am I clicking on the wrong links? Or maybe it was up, then taken down? No, for real; I’d like to have a look.
SPeaking of Pipes…He, Joseph Farah, Serge Trifkovic, (author of “The Sword and the Prophet), and Kenneth R. Timmerman, author and writer at Insight Magazine
Are leading/having a panel discussion this weekend at CPAC.
It’s being shown on CSPAN @ 3pm on Sat.
James, it is true that Pipe’s urged his supporters at Colorado College to “deligitimate voices” such as Ashrawi’s. See this article in which Pipes desribes his attempt to rebut Ashrawi. However, Pipes contrasts the differences in tactics used by both sides in his article comparing the protests in Colorado with those in Montreal. The anti-Ashrawi protesters in Colorado were peaceful, civilized and democratic; the anti-Netanyahu protesters in Montreal were violent, barbarous and totalitarian.