Defending Free Speech at Louisiana State

A second-year law student at Louisiana State University has published a searing analysis of the way freedom of speech is being handled in modern academia. He begins:

Higher-education institutions are no longer havens for free intellectual discussion and open debate. Since public universities have lost nearly every court battle over clearly identified speech codes, administrators have developed stealthier ways to regulate unwanted speech. These covert speech codes are hidden in university handbooks under seemingly harmless provisions such as e-mail guidelines, diversity statements and harassment policies. Even though these policies arenâ??t identified as â??speech codes,â? university administrators are still able to use them to repress unpopular opinions, censor parodies, hinder political speech and restrict academic freedom.

Included in his analysis is the treatment the NYU Objectivist club received from administrators during their recent attempts to foster discussion of the Mohammad cartoons.
See the full article for more.

Bidinotto on the Cowardice at Borders Bookstores

Robert Bidinotto has published an article called “High Noon” at Borders which provides an interesting perspective on Borders Bookstores’ recent public relations fiasco.
He is particularly interested in the media’s excuses for not standing up to bullies:

These people proclaim that standing up to Islamists isn’t their responsibility — that it’s the job of the U.S. military or FBI. Yet many of these same media representatives have made careers out of denouncing and opposing the U.S. military and the FBI. They oh-so-bravely expose and denounce military abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo; they very-very-courageously take editorial stands against Bushitler and the CIA, NSA, and Patriot Act, in defense of Our Threatened Civil Liberties; they ever-so-valiantly demand the sacred Constitutional right to publish photos of returning coffins of U.S. troops or degrading images of abused Iraqi prisoners.

And:

Thanks to these traitors to the First Amendment, America is fast becoming Will Kane’s Hadleyville. They more and more resemble the cringing, “civilized” town fathers in that corrupt fictional crossroads: prostrate in spineless supplication before the town bullies, projecting shameful resentment against the Will Kanes whose bravery shows them up for the cowards that they are.

See the full article for more (including an ending that’s fit for Hollywood).

Muslims Call for a Ban of Voltaire Play

While the world’s attention is focused on the Danish Cartoons, Muslims in France have been calling for a ban of a play by Voltaire that satirizes the Prophet Muhammad.
The play, “Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet,” uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance.
Voltaire’s historical role in establishing the right for free speech is clear:

Editors in France, Germany and elsewhere have explained their decision to reprint the drawings by pointing to principles enshrined in a statement often attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Read the entire report here.
(Credit goes to TIA Daily for publishing this item.)

Terrorist Appeasement at Borders Bookstores

From an open letter to Borders executives:

I have been a loyal Borders customer — now a Borders Rewards customer — for quite a few years. I spend many hundreds of dollars annually in your store.
However, I have just learned that Borders and its affiliated Waldenbooks have banned the next issue of a publication, Free Inquiry, from your magazine shelves, because that publication is reprinting the controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad on inside pages. The reason given by Borders is alleged fear of violence from radical Muslims, and desire to “protect” customers and employees.

Keep reading…

NYU Suppresses Objectivist Club's Free Speech

Press release from the Ayn Rand Institute:

Freedom of Speech needs your help. New York University is censoring the display of the Danish cartoons at this evening’s panel discussion on free speech that NYU’s Objectivist club has organized. We urge you to contact NYU’s administration and let them know what you think about their display of cowardice and censorship. Hopefully, with your help, NYU’s administration will reverse its disgraceful decision to clamp down on our right to free speech and let the event go ahead as originally planned.
Contact:
John Sexton, president of NYU: john.sexton@nyu.edu Bob Butler, director of student activities at NYU: bob.butler@nyu.edu
NYU’s Surrender Underscores Need to Display Danish Cartoons
Irvine, CA–“In a seemingly mundane decision, New York University has sacrificed the principle underlying the survival of civilization–free speech,” said Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. NYU is refusing to protect a student group’s right to display the Danish cartoons of Mohammad at a panel discussion on free speech on March 29.
The group’s event was to be open to the public, but at the last minute NYU retreated. Under the pretense of maintaining campus security, the administration contradicted its own stated policy on free speech by requiring that, if the cartoons are displayed, the event be limited only to “members of the NYU community.” The student group now must turn away more than 150 members of the public who had planned to attend the panel.
“The university’s shameful appeasement of Muslim and anti-free-speech groups–which have vowed to protest the event–underscores the urgent need to display the cartoons in defense of freedom of speech,” said Dr. Brook.
“Free speech protects the rational mind: it is the freedom to think, to reach conclusions and express one’s views without fear of coercion of any kind. And it must include the right to express unpopular and offensive views, including outright criticism of religion. NYU–which like other universities grants tenure to protect intellectual freedom–ought to recognize the crucial importance of this principle and defend it.
“If intimidation and threats are allowed to compel writers, cartoonists, thinkers and institutions of learning into self-censorship, the right to free speech is lost. If Muslims are allowed to pressure critics of Islam into silence, critics of religion will be next. And then everyone else.”
Panel Discussion on the Danish Cartoons
Panelists: Peter Schwartz, former chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute and author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America; Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims; and Jonathan Leaf, New York Press editor who resigned over his paper’s decision not to publish the Danish cartoons.
Moderator: Dr. Harry Binswanger, professor of philosophy and member of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute.
What is planned: (1) A display of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad. (2) A panel discussion and Q & A on the meaning of the worldwide reaction to the cartoons.
Where: New York University, 60 Washington Square South at NYU Kimmel Center, Eisner and Lubin Auditorium (4th Floor), NY, NY 10012
When: March 29, 2006, 7 to 10 PM

For more on the situation, see NoodleFood, which is covering the fallout closely.

Major Media Interviews with Tal Ben-Shahar

We’ve mentioned here before that Tal Ben-Shahar‘s positive psychology class was getting a good deal of coverage in the Harvard Crimson.
Ben-Shahar founded the Harvard Objectivist Club in the 1990s and is currently an instructor at Harvard, where he teaches the largest class on campus, positive psychology.
Now his class is getting coverage in major media outlets, including Fox News (Four Happiness Tips from Tal Ben-Shahar), NPR (Finding Happiness in a Harvard Classroom), and the New York Post (C’mon, Get Happy).
He was also interviewed on Boston’s “Good Morning Live,” the video of which is available online (scroll down to “Harvard Psychology Professor Tal Ben-Shahar” on 3/16/06).
The central premise of positive psychology — the importance of personal happiness — is one that Ayn Rand understood and appreciated in her writings and in her philosophy of Objectivism.
Positive psychology, as a field, has elevated the importance of personal happiness to a science, allowing people to study the empirical precursors of happiness rather than relying on folk psychology remedies.
There is a lot of good work being done in this field, and professor Ben-Shahar has probably done more than anyone recently to bring that information into the public eye.

Glenn Reynolds on Newspaper Reform

Glenn Reynolds has published a terrific article in TCS Daily about what conventional newspapers can do about their shriveling influence.
It starts with the bad news for papers:

Moody’s is looking at downgrading the New York Times’ credit rating. The Times’ stock is doing badly. And other newspapers are in trouble, too — the staff of the San Jose Mercury News has resorted to launching a “save our paper” website.

See the full article for more.

South Park Declares War on Scientology

Anyone with a carefully-cultivated derision for Scientologyâ?¢ will surely enjoy this bit of news:

“South Park” has declared war on Scientology. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the schedule Wednesday — with an Internet report saying it was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure.

Keep reading
Note to Scientologists: Never do battle with anyone who has the means to create a movie like Team America. …You could be next. Then you’ll be always be ronery and sadry arone.
UPDATE: Now you can see the scrapped Scientology episode online. …Complete with John Travolta and Tom Cruise impersonations.

How to Help Wafa Sultan

Wafa Sultan — the woman who spoke out so bravely against the roots of radical Islam on al Jazeera last month — is currently in hiding, in response to the Fatwa put on her head by crazed Islamofascists. Find out how you can help.
Hat-tip: Atlas Shrugs.
UPDATE: Some interesting background about Ms. Sultan, from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Sultan grew up in a large, traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith’s strictures into adulthood.
But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terror to try to undermine the regime of President Hafez Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.
“They shot hundreds of bullets into him shouting, ‘God is Great!’ ” she said. “At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god.”

Later in the same article:

An angry essay on that site by Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al-Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air in July.
In the debate, Sultan questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. “Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?” she asked. “In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched.”
Her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al-Jazeera again last month, saying she was not a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew but a “secular human being.”
The appearance was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as MEMRI, which said the clip had been viewed more than a million times. A link to the videotape and translated excerpts can be found at http://memri.org/index.html.
Sultan said she has received numerous death threats on her telephone answering machine and by e-mail: “Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see” and “If someone were to kill you, it would be me.”
Sultan said her mother, who lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister in Qatar.

See the full article for more.

Bank Won't Lend When Eminent Domain Is Involved

A terrific AP article in this morning’s San-Antonio Express News:

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — On its face, it appeared to be an odd decision for a banker, to turn down business on a principle that most people don’t think much about.
And so far, the banking giants haven’t seen fit to follow the lead of BB&T Corp.’s John Allison, who declared in January that the nation’s ninth-largest bank would no longer make loans to developers who plan to build commercial projects on land seized from citizens through the power of eminent domain.
“We happen to believe in the fundamental concept of individual rights, and one of those is property rights,” Allison said. “If that is jeopardized, our entire financial system is also in jeopardy.”
The prospect of losing out on a few loans, or taking a stand alone, hasn’t shaken Allison’s resolve and has only added to his reputation as a banker whose thoughts routinely stray to the philosophical.
Colleagues probably should have seen it coming from an executive known to quote Aristotle during board meetings.

Later in the article:

“John has a pretty unshakable moral compass, and frankly I think he is right on this,” said Charles Moyer, dean of the business school at the University of Louisville. “The potential for abuse is great, and someone needs to stand up for it. I was not surprised it was John and BB&T.”
Allison is an executive who mixes in re-readings of the works of Thomas Aquinas and John Locke into a book-a-month habit.
“My absolute favorite writer is Ayn Rand,” he said, referring to the Russian American philosopher and advocate of capitalism.
Allison’s reasoning against eminent domain is based in part on a strong belief in property rights, one of Locke’s cornerstone values, and one shared by the farmers in rural North Carolina.
“To these people, property rights are the single most important thing,” he said. “It’s the basis of economic freedom in this country, so they take it very seriously.”
Slipping into the role of college professor, a job for which Janeway said he’d be well-suited, Allison asks rhetorically why there is a need to use the power of government to force people from their homes. The answer sounds like one that would please a banker focused on shareholder value and the next quarter’s results, but that doesn’t hold sway with Allison.
“They really want to use it as lever to drive down the price,” he said, adding there have already been abuses of eminent domain rules, with the victims mostly among the poor, minorities and the elderly.

There’s lots more. Keep reading