No doubt you’ve heard in the news about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Colombia University in New York. I read an article from the New York Times today on line that was praising the President of Colombia for having the courage to support the Iranian President’s right to speak here in the US. Having worked in Higher Education for over 20 years I often came face to face with both sides of the Academic Freedom debate. Today, when I was watching the news and reading the paper it all came flooding back in the form of the question I raise in my title: What price - academic freedom?
You see, I agree that our right to free speech is quaranteed and SHOULD be guaranteed and preserved by our Constitution. I also believe that in a free society varying views on conroversial subjects should be allowed to be heard. The only problem comes when we try to live by the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. When we emphatically support ALL free speech - no matter how controversial - we conveniently forget that it is impossible to be totally consistent. The proof is that in a free society we still have some absolute values that we impose on all our citizens that may disregard their rights to free speech. For example; you can not use your free speech to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre without punishment of imprisonment. Perhaps a better example would be that the same institutions that exhault academic freedom under our constitutional rights would also ban what they call “hate speech”. Hate speech has been interpreted to include any pro-life speech and any anti-homosexual speech. Christians have long been the targets of liberal academic censors who would silence Christian beliefs and views on the grounds that they are “intolerant.”
So, when I see the President of Columbia University standing his ground on international television I think it somewhat lacking in integrity and truth. At best it is hypocritical. At worst it is extremely dangerous to our very national security. Why is it so dangerous? Because allowing this known terrorist to freely air his views on our land and in our schools, is in some way saying that his hate-filled, inhuman views may be correct in some people’s minds. On other issues we have come out clearly saying that certain views are NOT acceptable to be aired. This terroist’s views fall clearly in that category and no policy on academic freedom - no matter how liberal - should ever be allowed to be misinterpreted to protect the right of a madman to spew his hatred and make a mockery of everything we stand for as a free nation. The President of Columbia and all who agree with him should be ashamed of themselves and should beg for forgiveness of all those Americans whom they have offended by their liberal elitist thinking. They do not speak for freedom of speech, they speak for their own liberal agenda and their over inflated intellectual snobbery. Intellectualism without moral restraints makes robots out of men and women with the best of our intellect as the final word. Well, I believe we are humans, made in the image of God, whom I believe is the author of our moral codes and biblical values that this country was founded on.
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