Dipin Damodharan
Posted On: Jan 21, 2012
By Dipin Damodharan
The
last month of 2011 may be marked as a tainted month in the history of
Harvard University, one of the world’s most reputed educational
institutes. It was in the month of December that the University
dismissed the summer courses of a renowned Professor of Economics, Dr
Subramanian Swamy without any concrete reasons. Dr Swamy, a well-known
Indian politician, has written an article against Islamic terror in an
Indian newspaper and the same was the reason put forward by Harvard for
its shocking action.
The decision has drawn flak from intellectuals around the world. Dr Phyllis Chesler,
a globally acclaimed author and an Emerita Professor of Psychology and
Women's Studies at City University of New York, questions the very logic
behind Harvard’s action against Swamy. Dr Chesler is an influential
author, a legendary feminist leader, and a psychotherapist. She has
lectured and organised women's rights and human rights campaigns all
over the world and has also appeared in the world media as a passionate
commentator on the major events of our time.
Dr Chesler's has influenced innumerable people through her fourteen books and thousands of articles. In an exclusive talk with Education Insider,
she describes the Harvard University’s decision to scrap the summer
courses of Dr Swamy, is based on a myth developed in today’s world:
academic freedom is only confined to those who praise Islam. She also
says that a rather poisonous self-righteousness has invaded many Western
universities. Excerpts:
.Finally Harvard University
dismissed the courses (Economics S-110 and Economics S-1316) of a
distinguished professor, Subramanian Swamy, without any logical reasons.
What is the message that Harvard has to convey through this act?
Harvard’s message is that they are
anti-racist and politically correct and the fact that Dr Swamy himself
is an Indian and not a racist or ‘Islamophobic’ personally or
politically, makes no difference. A rather poisonous self-righteousness
has invaded many Western universities. Many presumably ‘good’ people who
believe they are enforcing ‘good’ values are, in actuality, functioning
in totalitarian and anti-democratic ways.
They are engaged in a version of
thought control. Shaming, ousting, firing, all lead to silence on the
part of other people, including other professors, who should be crying
out from the rooftops.
They do not do so because they are
afraid that they would then also be shamed, ‘ousted’ (or branded) as
racists, and fired. Edward Said’s (a Palestinian-American literary
theorist) lies have trumped all other truths on western campuses.
In a recently published
article written by you in the Israel National News, you tagged it as,
‘shame on you Harvard University? Where the western universities are
going?
Alas, many elite Western universities
have become outposts of United Nations thinking. They have been
Stalinized and ‘Palestinianised.’
The only honourable victim is either
the formerly colonised man of colour or the allegedly still colonised
Palestinian man (but not the woman) of colour.
The contemporary facts and the
history of Islamic gender and religious apartheid are only whispered
about; it is too dangerous to speak this truth openly on most elite
campuses or in any Middle East Institute on campus.
Instead, Israel is made scapegoat for all the crimes of radical and traditional Muslims—and India is all but forgotten.
When I lectured at Yale last year and
described what Islamic gender and religious apartheid is and does a
young student was puzzled. He literally asked me whether ‘the focus on
Islam, even if it is necessary, won’t then detract from the full-time
focus on the so-called Israeli settlements which is even more
important.’ His minimal understanding of contemporary and historical
global realities was astounding.
The decision to keep Swamy
out had nothing to do with his academic standards or the content of the
summer courses on economics which he was teaching for the last few
decades. Can we say the Harvard had put forward a wrong precedent?
Yes, of course. But from Harvard’s
point of view it was the right precedent. Anyone who criticizes anything
about Islam or anything that Muslims do—including terrorist attacks
against infidels (Hindus, Christians, Jews, Bahai’, Zoroastrian, African
animists, etc.) is, by definition, ‘Islamophobic’ and engaging in hate
speech.
This is viewed as setting a dangerous
example. Such truths are not protected by the First Amendment or by
academic freedom. Indeed, academic freedom is only granted to those who
praise Islam and condemn Western civilization (with its long history of
abolishing slavery, ending colonialism, establishing individual human
rights, including women’s rights.) This is a situation that only George
Orwell could appreciate.
Harvard University has publicly
declared its commitment to freedom of speech. Regarding the freedom of
speech, what can we read from this? Is this an action motivated by pure
politics?
Freedom of speech is endangered
everywhere by Islamist terrorists. Some say by Muslims in leadership
positions. Free speech/truth speech has been criminalised in many
countries in Europe.
The United Nations and the Obama
administration are all trying to suppress telling certain truths about
Islam. Many publishers in America fear being sued or firebombed if they
publish authors who tell an unacceptable truth about Islam.
Also, people want to believe that
other people are ‘good,’ that even terrorists can listen to reason and
may be trusted negotiating partners.
Why there is an increasing tendency to polarising our academic education on the lines of leftist and Islamic policies?
Unfortunately, while the Soviet Union
may have collapsed, Stalinism lives on in the professoriates who sowed
their wild oats in the 60s and who absolutely refuse to recognise the
genocides and the gulag practiced in the name of communism/socialism
under Stalin. Many still romanticize Mao and Che Guevara.
They wish to bring down capitalism.
Such leftists, who include feminists, postcolonial, and postmodern
thinkers, have made a dangerous alliance with Islamists. Perhaps it is a
death wish. Perhaps it is a form of slumming. They do fail to
understand the threat of Islam at a jihadic moment in history.
Source: http://educationinsider.net/articles/current_issue/100#.UE1UeTS_UKQ.twitter
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