VDARE-911-6

Abolishing America (contd.): Academe vs. Patriotism

By Paul Craig Roberts

10/28/2001

For many Americans the events of September 11 have breathed new life into patriotism, but many in academia and the media remain hostile to America.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org) has intervened in recent instances where academic administrators intentionally stifled patriotic expression and retaliated against those who voiced support for our country.

At Central Michigan University, students were ordered by university administrators to remove patriotic posters and the American flag from their dormitory. The students were told that these items were "offensive."

Duke University in North Carolina shut down Professor Gary Hull’s web page because he posted an article that called for a strong military response to the terrorist attack

At Pennsylvania State University, a professor was reprimanded by the vice provost for academic affairs for advocating military action as a response to the terrorist attacks. The professor was told that his comments were "insensitive and perhaps even intimidating," grounds for dismissal.

At Holy Cross in Massachusetts the chairman of the sociology department forced a secretary to remove the American flag that she had placed in memory of her friend Todd Beamer. Mr. Beamer was one of the passengers who challenged the terrorists on hijacked United flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.

At Lehigh University the vice provost of student affairs ordered the American flag to be removed from the school bus.

At Johns Hopkins University Professor Charles Fairbanks voiced his support at a public forum for an aggressive campaign against states that harbor terrorists. (All such states are Muslim with the exception of Cuba and North Korea.) He was accused of assisting people to commit hate crimes (against Muslims) and removed as director of the Central Asia Institute.

At the University of Massachusetts, (one of the leading academic zoos), students were granted a permit to protest the war against terrorism, but students who wanted to rally in support of U.S. policy were denied a permit.

At San Diego State University an Arabic-speaking Ethiopian student overheard three Arab students expressing their delight in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Ethiopian admonished the Arabs and was put on warning by university administrators for "threatening and abusive behavior." The Arabs were happy, he said. "I told them they should be ashamed." (Of four material witnesses arrested in San Diego in connection with the terrorist attacks, one is a San Diego State University student.)

At Florida Gulf Coast University the dean of library services ordered the library’s employees to remove stickers, "Proud to be an American," from their workspace on the grounds that such expressions were offensive to foreign students.

At the University of Missouri the director of the university’s TV station, KOMU, instructed employees not to wear red, white and blue ribbons in memory for those Americans killed in the September 11 attacks.

It is permissible to burn the American flag on university campuses. But don’t try waving one.

America-haters have the upper hand on many campuses. They are ever so sensitive to the feelings of Middle Eastern Muslims and completely insensitive to the feelings of patriotic Americans.

Multiculturalists, feminists, and a variety of other left-wing bigots have destroyed scholarship and turned education into a campaign against Western civilization. They seduce the minds of the young and fill them with shame of their country. These home grown terrorists in academic garb are a more dangerous enemy than the Taliban and Bin Laden.

While the U.S. conducts a war against terrorists, our own universities are conducting a terror war against the patriots on their campuses.

The Heritage Foundation is rightly calling for an end to World Bank and IMF subsidies to states that harbor terrorist organizations. We must also end taxpayer and donor subsidies to politically correct universities, which are Fifth Columns within our country.

Paul Craig Roberts is the author (with Lawrence M. Stratton) of The New Color Line : How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy

COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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