Judge Louis Brandeis must be spinning in his grave because of the actions of the university that bears his illustrious name.

Those who are interested in what goes on ‘across the pond’ in the United States of America cannot have failed to be gob-smacked by the news that a university known for its reputation of liberal views has banned an ex Muslim from being honoured by it.

Brandeis University has shamed itself by banning Ayaan Hirsi Ali from being honoured. It has by this action finally and comprehensively trashed not only its own reputation for liberality but also has dishonoured the memory of Justice Brandeis, the Supreme Court judge after whom the university was named.

The excellent writer Phyillis Chesler has produced a powerful piece on this subject which I would advise people to read in full so that they can get some idea just how deeply the more mentalist strands of Leftism have ensconced themselves in academia.

Ms Chesler said:

“By now, we all know that Brandeis University was about to bestow an honor on the elegant and distinguished author and activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her critique of Islam, her decision to leave Islam, and her championship of Muslim women’s rights.

One might understand why an apostate intellectual might be in danger in Somalia, the country of her birth, or in Saudi Arabia, where she once lived.

However, she has just been dishonored by Brandeis University, which withdrew its offer of a Distinguished Professorship because the Muslim Brotherhood in America, known to us as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its national student group, the Muslim Students Association, which is also allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) mounted a successful campaign against the award. Both CAIR and ISNA are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case.

CAIR provided the Muslim Student Association (MSU) at Brandeis with outdated, out-of-context, and highly inflammatory quotes from Hirsi Ali. They did not provide her thought-provoking, stirring, moving passages of which there are many. Brandeis simply caved to the lynch mob.

This is a terrible moment for academic freedom and critical inquiry on the American campus.

Yale University drove the first nail into the coffin of academic freedom, freedom of thought, and critical inquiry, when Yale’s University Press refused to publish the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons to accompany Jytte Klausen’s 2009 book on the subject: “The Cartoons That Shook The World.”

Yale drove a second nail into that coffin when it ousted Dr. Charles Small, who dared to focus on the victims of contemporary anti-Semitism, not merely on safely dead Jews. Dr. Small’s major international conference on this subject in 2010 had more than 100 speakers and 600 in attendance. The conference did not demonize the Jewish or American states and it did look at Jew-hatred and the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries today.

However, official Palestinian and student Palestinians insisted this was an “Islamophobic” conference. A campaign was mounted and Yale administrators and professors dismissed Dr. Small’s Institute although it was independently funded.

Brandeis University, the “Jewish” university, (in terms of liberal values), has now driven the a nail into the coffin of academic freedom and intellectual diversity, when it bowed to student and faculty pressure and rescinded their offer to Hirsi Ali.

I am outraged, saddened, and frightened all at the same time. I have sentimental ties to Brandeis and I am suffering their betrayal of their own stellar values.”

Read the rest here:

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/1277/the-shame-of-brandeis-university

Brandeis University has surrendered something very hard won, academic freedom, to a noisy, foolish and sometimes violent bunch of Islam appeasing activists. This should not be forgotten and must be condemned. Free thought has been killed off at Brandeis University and that is something that we should all worry about. If the academics of all people cannot think freely and without fear and without censorship, then what hope is there for the rest of us?