RUTHFULLY YOURS

Wayne State took action after Ms. Thomas – an alumna – made inflammatory comments Thursday during a keynote speech at a colloquium titled “Images and Perceptions of Arab-Americans: The New America: Mom, Apple Pie and Arab Bashing.” The event was billed as an “educational workshop” that would “help participants understand Arab Americans, their issues and their rich heritage and culture” and provide “insights enabling participants to interpret and evaluate the circumstances with a more informed and unbiased outlook.” Ms. Thomas’ contribution to this educational effort was to declare that, among other things, “we are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists.” She received a standing ovation from the assembled, but Wayne State disagreed.

The Journalism Institute for Media Diversity is a questionable proposition to begin with, typical of the plethora of such programs promoting the trendy leftist “diversity” concept. Had Ms. Thomas limited her attacks to white men, Christians, Republicans or other historically disadvantaged groups on college campuses, she probably wouldn’t have raised such a ruckus. But crossing the line into what came across as garden-variety anti-Semitic bigotry was too much even for a university.

Ms. Thomas has been a fixture at such events since she lost her job with Hearst News Service in June. She was fired after a video went viral in which she said Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Germany and Poland. Arab Detroit, the organization that hosted last week’s event, called her firing a “political execution,” but the scandal hasn’t hurt her standing among Arab-American activists. Last month, she received the Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award presented by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and on Dec. 12 she’s scheduled to be the featured speaker at a fundraiser for the Arab American Action Network. The network’s executive director, Hatem Abudayyeh, is reportedly the subject of an extensive FBI investigation into terrorist financing.

Ms. Thomas fumed that “the leaders of Wayne State University have made a mockery of the First Amendment and disgraced their understanding of its inherent freedom of speech and the press.” The First Amendment, however, does not guarantee that institutions must maintain awards named for people who publicly go off the deep end. Wayne State isn’t censoring Ms. Thomas’ remarks or trying to prevent her from making comments widely understood as anti-Semitic bigotry; it is simply trying to protect its reputation. Ms. Thomas is free to indulge in bizarre musings about “Jewish-only roads” in Israel and whatever other fantasies she might want to discuss, but that doesn’t mean Wayne State or any other respectable university is compelled to become her co-conspirator.