RUTHFULLY YOURS

Editor’s note: The Freedom Center continues its report on the “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment” by naming San Francisco State University to the list. It joins the campuses of Brooklyn College (CUNY), Tufts University, Brandeis University, UCLA, UC-Berkeley and Vassar College. These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.

The San Francisco State administration has ignored outright threats of terrorism originating from its General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) but labeled Freedom Center posters critical of Hamas “bullying behavior.” Last night, the Freedom Center again placed posters exposing the links between the terrorist group Hamas and SJP on SFSU’s campus. It remains to be seen whether the SFSU administration will again order them torn down or whether they will uphold the First Amendment on campus.

San Francisco State University: Leslie E. Wong, President

San Francisco State University cultivates its reputation as one of the most radical campuses in the nation, known for its disruptive protests and extremist student movements. The anti-Israel movement at SFSU, led by an SJP-surrogate group called the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) fits into this tradition. Even in the radicalized world of anti-Israel student organizations, GUPS stands out for its brazen and public Jew hatred.

In April 2016, when Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat appeared on campus, a GUPS mob shouting “Intifada” and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!,” itself a call for the obliteration of the Jewish state, forced the cancellation of his speech. When SFSU President Leslie Wong called tepidly for an investigation into the protestors who shut down Barkat’s speech, GUPS responded by asserting that this request “criminalize[s] anti-racist speech on campus.”

The former president of GUPS, Mohammad G. Hammad, wrote dozens of social media posts threatening violence to pro-Israel students, Israelis, the IDF and others. He also praised Hamas and the violent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

During an “emergency rally” held by GUPS at SFSU in December 2013, the phrase “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers” was written with chalk on the concrete stage at Malcolm X Plaza. The same phrase, referring to the Hamas assertion that Jews have colonized Arab Palestine and must be exterminated, was also written on a sign at a display table during the “Edward Said Mural Celebration.”

The convoluted legal saga of Rasmea Odeh is thankfully nearing its end. On April 25, the convicted murderer and fraudster pled guilty in federal court to committing immigration fraud and violating 18 U.S.C §1425(a) which criminalizes knowingly procuring naturalization contrary to law. She will be stripped of her U.S. citizenship and is expected to be deported – likely to Jordan – after a sentencing hearing scheduled for August 17. Unfortunately, we will have to endure her presence in the U.S. for another 3 ½ months.

Courtroom witnesses said that Odeh teared up during her allocution. But the tears she shed were not for the two young university students – Leon Kaner, 21, and Edward Jaffe, 22 – she murdered on February 21, 1969 when she and her PFLP cohorts detonated a bomb at a Jerusalem supermarket. No, her tears were the tears of a cowardly, unrepentant terrorist who was sorry that she got caught committing immigration fraud.

By any standard, Rasmea Odeh is toxic. She is a convicted murderer and terrorist whose felony record now spans two continents. She is also a rabid anti-Semite. Her bombs targeted Jews for no other reason than the fact that they were Jews. Her instruments of death were insidiously timed to go off on Friday when Jewish shoppers were known to purchase last minute grocery provisions for the Sabbath. So sinister was this woman that she timed the second bomb to go off just as first responders – doctors and ambulance personnel – were tending to the wounded. Thankfully, the second bomb was discovered and neutralized in the nick of time, minutes before causing further injuries or damage.

But Odeh still has her supporters. The PFLP (A group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department) has named terror cells after her. More recently, the anti-Semitic hate group, Jewish Voice for Peace, featured Odeh as a guest speaker at their annual hate fest. Another invited guest speaker was the notorious Linda Sarsour, a woman who once absurdly touted Saudi Arabia (a country that often punishes rape victims and denies women the right to drive) as a model for upholding women’s rights. Sarsour, who has a long history of offensive social media posts, including support for terrorism, once tweeted that she wished she could give her political opponents an “ass whippin” and wanted to “take their vaginas.” She maintains racist views that are consistent with the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism and openly calls for the end of Israel.

Editor’s note: The University of California-Berkeley is the latest school to be named to the Freedom Center’s report on the “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” It joins the campuses of Brooklyn College (CUNY), Tufts University, Brandeis University, UCLA, and Vassar College on the list. These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.

The Berkeley administration has shown great hostility to speech critical of Hamas and SJP. When the Freedom Center previously placed posters on the Berkeley campus exposing the links between Hamas and SJP, Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman labeled them “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” Last night, the Freedom Center again placed posters critical of Hamas and SJP on the Berkeley campus. These posters disrupt the anti-Israel narrative that dominates on campus and serve as a challenge to the Berkeley administration to uphold its constitutional obligation to honor the First Amendment on campus.

University of California-Berkeley: Nils Gilman, Associate Chancellor

The University of California-Berkeley has a well-deserved reputation for stigmatizing ideas which don’t fit the extreme left-wing, anti-Israel campus culture. Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman has epitomized this double-standard by failing to condemn outright calls for terrorism and genocide against the Jews from campus anti-Israel groups while denouncing posters putting forth factual information about Students for Justice in Palestine and its links to Hamas.

In a letter sent to the entire campus community in April 2016, Gilman denounced anti-SJP posters hung on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” He claimed that UC Berkeley “remains committed to combating all forms of bias and discrimination” and asked the campus community to “use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents”—in other words, urging Berkeley’s students and faculty to report any speech that challenges the leftist thought control enforced at Berkeley.

When the Freedom Center again hung posters exposing the truth about SJP at Berkeley in October of 2016, Gilman issued another letter stating that the language in the posters “violates our Principles of Community” and ordered them to be taken down.

The UC-Berkeley Principles of Community which he references state, in part, “We affirm the dignity of all individuals and strive to uphold a just community in which discrimination and hate are not tolerated” and “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.”

But by failing to uphold free speech and intellectual diversity, Gilman’s comments in his letters to the Berkeley community violate these Principles. They also degrade the spirit of open discourse and the exploration of all sides of crucial issues which lie at the heart of the mission of the modern liberal arts university.

Last Tuesday, eight Yale graduate students began an indefinite hunger strike on Beinecke Plaza, just a stone’s throw away from the university’s administrative offices. The graduate students’ union, Local 33, which organized this “protest fast,” said in a statement that they would not leave until Yale initiates contract negotiations with the union.

Or until they start to feel light-headed.

According to the New Haven Independent, “if not eating endangers a student’s health, that individual will sub out and another union member will assume their place in renouncing meals.” And should low blood sugar cloud the strikers’ judgment, a team of medical professionals is standing by to monitor the fast’s progress. Such safeguards were of little comfort to Robin Canavan, who compared the physical toll of the strike to that ghastly feeling of “exhaustion after pulling an all-nighter.” An all-nighter without any coffee.

But even this crippling fatigue won’t deter Local 33 chairman Aaron Greenberg, a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s political-science department and a self-styled civil-rights activist. In his recent op-ed in the New Haven Independent, Greenberg invoked the words of Martin Luther King to condemn Yale’s abhorrent treatment of its graduate students:

King explained that his campaign sought “to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” This is what we did yesterday in Local 33 when we began our fast.

He goes on:

So let’s not have any mistakes about what Yale means when they say they “respect the process” of the law. . . . It’s the dynamic Dr. King described when he wrote, “‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”

Yale should up its admissions standards. Greenberg’s civil-rights analogy displays an astonishing level of historical amnesia, which trivializes the struggles of King and other black leaders. But more than that, it reflects a new and worrying trend: the corporatization of higher education.

To characterize Yale’s unwillingness to begin contract negotiations as an assault on human dignity is to reduce the relationship of students and administrators to that of employers and employees. On this view, Yale’s obligations to its graduate students are just like a company’s obligations to its workers. In forestalling collective bargaining and, by extension, in opposing Local 33, the administration functions as an oppressive corporate entity, more than willing to sacrifice the welfare of its employees to maximize profit. Indeed, the concept of graduate unionization makes sense only when it is presented as a response to precisely this sort of dynamic — the proletariat against the plutocrat.

Greenberg’s views thus rest on a grave category error, in that they apply the framework of labor relations to what is fundamentally not a labor-relations issue. When Bernie Sanders said that American workers were burnt out, I somehow doubt that Yale graduate students were the people he had in mind.

When Bernie Sanders said that American workers were burnt out, I somehow doubt that Yale graduate students were the people he had in mind.

When Anne Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Charles Murray is blocked from a speaking engagement at a liberal university due to a riot, the incident makes headlines.

But these protests aren’t the only cases of intimidation being used to silence non-Leftist speech on campus, however. Not by a long shot. Steven Glick, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper Claremont Independent, shares his experiences:

I began writing for the Claremont Independent — a student-run conservative paper at the Claremont Colleges — and became a vocal opponent of political correctness.

My classmates — as well as my former employer on campus — grew upset with my coverage of the over-the-top PC-policing and began to think up ways to silence me. I was frequently reported to the deans, and a petition even circulated asking the administration to expel me and my staff.

Part of what makes this culture so troubling is the number of double standards it engenders. “Marginalized” students perversely pursue “equality” by pulling groups perceived as privileged down. “Privileged” students are chastised for committing “microaggressions” against their marginalized peers, while marginalized students are free to commit blatant acts of racial or gender bias against those they deem privileged.

…

That’s true both outside and inside the classroom. The faculty at Pomona is incredibly unbalanced ideologically. Unsurprisingly, the curriculums are severely biased with dissenting views unwelcome. The number of class offerings shrinks dramatically for anyone unwilling to fully toe the progressive line. Several of my friends and I decide which classes to take based not on the course content or reading material, but instead based solely on which professors seem least likely to let political or racial biases affect classroom discussion and grading.

Two weeks ago, I tried to produce a video in which my peers would explain their opposition to Heather Mac Donald and describe the reasons they did not believe she should be allowed to speak on campus.

I stayed at the protest for nearly an hour, talking to as many students as I could. But students involved in the protest refused to answer any of my questions. Instead, they blocked my camera, pushed me and formed a wall around me to restrict my movement.

That is only a small sampling of Glick’s experiences, but it’s a glimpse into the fascist opposition to vocal right-leaning students on American college campuses.

Despite claims of “tolerance,” of wanting to have a “conversation” about race, sexuality, income inequality, or any number of issues, their behavior shows they want the precise opposite.

For most Americans, we can step away from that. We can spend time with like-minded friends, or just step away from politics completely for a time.

But for students like Glick looking to develop skills required for a journalism career, there is no escape. The mistreatment is a driving force in their lives, something they have to plan everything around in order to get a fair shake from their college experience. CONTINUE AT SITE

For the sake of campus protestors and their professors across the country, it’s time to make something clear: there’s no such thing as hate speech.

That should go without saying, since freedom of speech and free inquiry is supposed to be what college is all about. But the recent spate of violent student protests, from the University of California at Berkeley to Middlebury College in Vermont, have been met with a collective shrug from an alarming number of college students, professors, and administrators who seem to be under the impression that violence is okay so long as its purpose is to silence “hate speech.”
By hate speech, they mean ideas and opinions that run afoul of progressive pieties. Do you believe abortion is the taking of human life? That’s hate speech. Think transgenderism is a form of mental illness? Hate speech. Concerned about illegal immigration? Believe in the right to bear arms? Support President Donald Trump? All hate speech.

But in fact, there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. The answer to the question, “Where does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” is this: nowhere. For the purposes of the First Amendment, there is no difference between free speech and hate speech. Ideas and opinions that progressive students and professors find offensive or “hateful” are just as protected by the Bill of Rights as anti-Trump slogans chanted at a campus protest.
‘Fighting Words’ Are Not Hate Speech

There are, of course, certain kinds of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. But those have nothing to do with hate speech, which has no legal definition. For example, there’s an exception for “fighting words,” which the courts have defined as a face-to-face insult directed at a specific person for the purpose of provoking a fight.

But fighting words can’t be expanded to mean hate speech—or even bigoted speech. In the early 1990s, the city of St. Paul tried to do just that, by punishing what it considered bigoted fighting words under its Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. The case, which involved a white teenager burning a cross made from taped-together broken chair legs in the front yard of a black family that lived across the street, went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court ruled the city’s ordinance was facially unconstitutional (which means a statute is always unconstitutional and hence void) and that it constituted viewpoint-based discrimination. Writing for the majority in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia explained that, as written,

the ordinance applies only to ‘fighting words’ that insult, or provoke violence, ‘on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.’ Displays containing abusive invective, no matter how vicious or severe, are permissible unless they are addressed to one of the specified disfavored topics. Those who wish to use ‘fighting words’ in connection with other ideas—to express hostility, for example, on the basis of political affiliation, union membership, or homosexuality—are not covered. The First Amendment does not permit St. Paul to impose special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects.

As for discriminating against certain viewpoints, Scalia noted that fighting words are excluded from First Amendment protection not because they communicate a particular idea but because “their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey.” The city’s ordinance, he wrote, simply didn’t fit the definition of fighting words: