Dhimmitude at Yale University Press: No Muhammad cartoons!

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by SF-TX

Yale's Surrender

What did you expect?


The world is bowing to islam.....why should yale be different?

[SF-TX]

Cartoon Jihad Continues
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)
Posted 08/20/2009 ET


A much-needed new book is coming from Yale University Press: The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University. It discusses the cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that were published in the largest newspaper in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, late in 2005, touching off murderous rage from Muslims around the world.

Such a book could be a useful exploration of the free speech issues that the cartoon controversy raised. And it has already shed new light on the Islamic challenge to free speech represented by the response to the cartoons, even before it has been published.

But it has done so in a way that neither Jytte Klausen nor Yale University Press intends.

For Yale University Press, according to the New York Times, checked with twenty-four “diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism,” as well as other authorities, and they all made the same recommendation: this book about the Muhammad cartoons should not actually include the Muhammad cartoons. John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, explained that “the cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words,” and thus “reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.” He said he had “never blinked” when publishing controversial material before, but “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”

Blood on his hands? Really? While it may seem laudable to want to protect Yale University Press staff and employees from violent reprisals by Islamic jihadists, in fact Yale University Press’s position represents a capitulation of astonishing proportions. He is demonstrating that threats of violence work, and that Western non-Muslims will not stand up and defend the principle of free speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation.

John Donatich and Yale University Press seem to have forgotten that there is no freedom of speech without the freedom to ridicule and even to offend. The instant that any ideology or belief system is considered off-limits for critical examination and even ridicule, that belief system has established an ideological hegemony that destroys free thought and free inquiry. Westerners seem to grasp this when it comes to affronts to Christianity, even when they are as offensive as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or Chris Ofili’s dung- and pornography-encrusted Holy Virgin Mary. But the same clarity doesn’t seem to extend to an Islamic context.

Even worse, when Donatich speaks of blood on his hands, he shows that he has, in a pathetic manifestation of intellectual Stockholm Syndrome, adopted the world view of the violent Muslim foes of free speech around the world. For what if the decision had been made that The Cartoons That Shook the World would reproduce the cartoons? Would that really have been “gratuitous”? Of course not. It would have been precisely appropriate to the book at hand. And what if Islamic supremacist thugs murdered more innocent people because of the book? Would that blood have been on the hands of John Donatich or Jytte Klausen? Only in the eyes of the Islamic supremacists themselves. But not in reality. For if someone flies into a murderous rage because of a perfectly reasonable action, the reasonable actor does not thereby become responsible.

If I meet someone who says that he will kill a person every time I step on a crack in the sidewalk, I do not thereby become responsible for the deaths of those people he murders as a result. And if I began to behave as if I were indeed responsible in such a case, I would only be feeding the psychosis of the killer.

The Yale University Press’s cowardly decision not to reprint the Muhammad cartoons in a book about those cartoons only feeds the murderous Islamic supremacist psychosis that is responsible -- truly responsible -- for so much violence around the world today.

On December 14, 2005, I wrote in Human Events that “the cartoon controversy indicates the gulf between the Islamic world and the post-Christian West in matters of freedom of speech and expression. And it may yet turn out that as the West continues to pay homage to its idols of tolerance, multiculturalism, and pluralism, it will give up those hard-won freedoms voluntarily.” And here we are.

Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)", "The Truth About Muhammad," and "Stealth Jihad" (all from Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33186

[Richard]

Yale - from an incoming student's point of view.

Richard's $.02

Disorientation At Yale
Matt Shaffer, Minding The Campus, 26 Aug 2009

My freshman orientation at Yale was disillusioning. I thought I would learn something about the kind of education I could expect over the next four years, but I was sorely disappointed.

[click link for full article]

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/orig..._freshman.html

[Sigaba]

Matt Shaffer
<<SNIP>>
My freshman orientation at Yale was disillusioning. I thought I would learn something about the kind of education I could expect over the next four years, but I was sorely disappointed.

FWIW, Mr. Shaffer has recovered from the disillusionment he encountered as a freshman. Since then, Mr. Shaffer has re-discovered his youthful confidence, embraced student life at Yale, and learned to manage his expectations. Or has he?

In 2007, Mr. Shaffer lobbied before the Yale Political Union to expand the number of residential colleges from ten to twelve. He said:

A Yale degree is not a yacht by which we can coast and sail on the lazy river of life the rest of our lives....And that is why I say open our doors to new competition, new faces and people whose SAT scores are not quite as high as ours.*

The next year, Mr. Shaffer become the chairman of Yale's Party of the Right <<LINK>>. During his chairmanship, he offered these comments in his annual address to party members.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have been told that we are a Party of obstructionists, of romantics, of reactionaries, and of extreme right-wingers. [You have] been told the truth....The truth is, the Party of the Right is a very dangerous organization. We are like the Spartan soldier at Thermopylae who, when told that his enemies had such great numbers their arrows would darken the sky, said, ‘Then we shall fight in the shade.’ We are indeed fighting in the shade, ladies and gentlemen, for amid a crumbling society that worships mediocrity, we alone are committed to making great men....If it is Fascist to believe that unlimited license makes men less free and not more free, then we are Fascist.**

This past November, Mr. Shaffer abstained from voting in the 2008 presidential election.***

One wonders what Mr. Shaffer really wants. (He offers hints here and there.)

__________________________________________________ _
^ <<LINK>>. Language warning.
* Source is here.
** Source is here. According to this source, the use of "Fascist" to describe the Party of the Right is an established convention practiced by all chairmen in the annual speech. However, coupled with his speech's militaristic imagery, that dubious tradition may have been ill-served by Mr. Shaffer. (Maybe, and it is just a hunch, the POR would not be accused of being Nazis if they stopped advertising themselves as Fascists.)
*** Source is here.

[Ret10Echo]

In this particular article I most enjoyed the following quote:

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in a recent letter that Yale's decision effectively means: "We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands."

Full article is here:

[greenberetTFS]

My son is the Director of Sales,Penn State University Press ...This was his response to his Yale University Press counter part from his blog.............


Monday, August 17, 2009
A Cartoon-ish Depiction
I just finished reading the New York Times piece on the controversy involving Yale University Press's decision not to include the Danish cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad in their forthcoming book about the uproar that occurred when those cartoons first appeared in Danish papers back in 2005.

While a lifelong defender of freedom of speech, I don't think the decision is all that cut and dry and I sympathize with their dilemma. As the director of the Press pointed out, some 200 people have already died in the violence that resulted from the publication of the images. “When it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question” John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, told the New York Times. But I must say that I am very disappointed that they then chose to eliminate all of the depictions of the Prophet Muhammad that the book was going to contain, including the work of Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí. I have more trouble understanding that. I also think it was probably a foolish move to require the author sign a confidentiality agreement to be allowed to read the report the press commissioned from various scholars and diplomats on whether to include the images or not. These weren't reader's reports. They were security opinions and the only conceivable reason the Press might have required the author to sign the agreement was to control the spin the controversy was taking. It has had the opposite effect and seems to instead make the Press look a bit paranoid.

But my favorite quote in the story comes from the Reza Aslan, a well known and respected religion scholar and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, who withdrew his endorsement for the book and noted in the Times:“This is an academic book for an academic audience by an academic press. There is no chance of this book having a global audience." Ouch. He might have been right about that if he were referring to your ordinary university press publishing your ordinary monograph. But as we're talking about Yale here, I don't think that's quite accurate. And perhaps because Yale has such an international reach, maybe they also have a greater responsibility, not just to their staff, but also to scholarship.
Posted by Tony at 10:45 AM 0 comments
Labels: cartoons, controversy, John Donatich, new york times, Reza Aslan, self-censorship, the Prophet Muhammad, Yale University Press

Big Teddy

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

FWIW, Mr. Shaffer has recovered from the disillusionment he encountered as a freshman. Since then, Mr. Shaffer has re-discovered his youthful confidence, embraced student life at Yale, and learned to manage his expectations. Or has he?

In 2007, Mr. Shaffer lobbied before the Yale Political Union to expand the number of residential colleges from ten to twelve. He said:

The next year, Mr. Shaffer become the chairman of Yale's Party of the Right <<LINK>>. During his chairmanship, he offered these comments in his annual address to party members.

This past November, Mr. Shaffer abstained from voting in the 2008 presidential election.***

One wonders what Mr. Shaffer really wants. (He offers hints here and there.)

__________________________________________________ _
^ <<LINK>>. Language warning.
* Source is here.
** Source is here. According to this source, the use of "Fascist" to describe the Party of the Right is an established convention practiced by all chairmen in the annual speech. However, coupled with his speech's militaristic imagery, that dubious tradition may have been ill-served by Mr. Shaffer. (Maybe, and it is just a hunch, the POR would not be accused of being Nazis if they stopped advertising themselves as Fascists.)
*** Source is here.

What is your problem? It's a well-written article identifying a significant problem on college campuses. The stuff you quote and link to is out of context and the attacks are downright silly.

What would Robert Crumb say about this?

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Roguish Lawyer

What is your problem? It's a well-written article identifying a significant problem on college campuses. The stuff you quote and link to is out of context and the attacks are downright silly.

RL--

The 's' word I had in mind was 'subtlety.' Since that did not pan out, I'll try a more direct method.

Mr. Shaffer would have us believe that he is somehow a victim of the school's intellectual intolerance. He would also have us believe that he's a member of one of the "small pockets of students at Yale who are actually interested in the life of the mind...." I have my doubts.

My take is that he's yet another undergraduate who would rather be right about an issue than get that issue addressed effectively. It is noteworthy that, years after the fact, he apparently has nothing new to report on his interaction with Professor Yoshino, his freshman counselor, or the dean and master of his college. What ever happened to making an appointment with someone and talking? A long conversation while breaking bread? Telephones? What about an email?

While I was never one for activism, on those occasions when I had a beef with a school's policy or an professor's method of instruction, it certainly did not take years to get the issue resolved. Then again, why bother to build rapport, to establish credibility, and to get one's point across privately and effectively when one can complain publicly and ineffectively?

"I am a victim of the left's intolerance!" and "I went to Yale University and all I got was a lousy sheepskin" may make for entertaining reads in the blogosphere these days. IMO, preaching (badly) to the choir is not enough.

In regards to the "out of context" "stuff" and the "silly" "attacks."

• Mr. Shaffer's advocacy of expanding the number of residential colleges demonstrates a questionable grasp of how policy is changed in an academic environment. In some spheres of the private sector, openly mocking stakeholders and folks higher up in the food chain may be the way to get people to change their minds, but that is not an approach that will get one far in the Ivory Tower. Call it a hunch.
• Mr. Shaffer's participation in the Party of the Right flies in the face of his allegations of Yale's intellectual bankruptcy and his own high purpose. Reveling in being labeled a "fascist" is like waving a banner saying "Please don't take me seriously." There's something to be said about self-effacing irony, but when it comes to hateful slurs, irony quickly gives way to self-humiliation. Bluntly, his likening of the POR to the Spartans at Thermopylae is the kind of hyperbole that gives hyperbole a bad name. YMMV.
• His argument that Mory's represents a "sacred Yale tradition" is noteworthy because it contrasts to his iconclasm. He's a staunch loyalist when it is convenient and a rebel ready to throw his school under the bus when things don't go his way. (What, they don't teach the value of intellectual consistency in the Humanities Department?)
• And as he adroitly points out, students choose to go to Yale. So despite all his grousing about how terrible things have been for him and how he's a victim, he has stuck around. His persistence begs a question. If things at Yale are as intolerable as he would have his readers believe, why didn't he transfer?

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

RL--

The 's' word I had in mind was 'subtlety.' Since that did not pan out, I'll try a more direct method.

Mr. Shaffer would have us believe that he is somehow a victim of the school's intellectual intolerance. He would also have us believe that he's a member of one of the "small pockets of students at Yale who are actually interested in the life of the mind...." I have my doubts.

My take is that he's yet another undergraduate who would rather be right about an issue than get that issue addressed effectively. It is noteworthy that, years after the fact, he apparently has nothing new to report on his interaction with Professor Yoshino, his freshman counselor, or the dean and master of his college. What ever happened to making an appointment with someone and talking? A long conversation while breaking bread? Telephones? What about an email?

While I was never one for activism, on those occasions when I had a beef with a school's policy or an professor's method of instruction, it certainly did not take years to get the issue resolved. Then again, why bother to build rapport, to establish credibility, and to get one's point across privately and effectively when one can complain publicly and ineffectively?

"I am a victim of the left's intolerance!" and "I went to Yale University and all I got was a lousy sheepskin" may make for entertaining reads in the blogosphere these days. IMO, preaching (badly) to the choir is not enough.

In regards to the "out of context" "stuff" and the "silly" "attacks."

• Mr. Shaffer's advocacy of expanding the number of residential colleges demonstrates a questionable grasp of how policy is changed in an academic environment. In some spheres of the private sector, openly mocking stakeholders and folks higher up in the food chain may be the way to get people to change their minds, but that is not an approach that will get one far in the Ivory Tower. Call it a hunch.
• Mr. Shaffer's participation in the Party of the Right flies in the face of his allegations of Yale's intellectual bankruptcy and his own high purpose. Reveling in being labeled a "fascist" is like waving a banner saying "Please don't take me seriously." There's something to be said about self-effacing irony, but when it comes to hateful slurs, irony quickly gives way to self-humiliation. Bluntly, his likening of the POR to the Spartans at Thermopylae is the kind of hyperbole that gives hyperbole a bad name. YMMV.
• His argument that Mory's represents a "sacred Yale tradition" is noteworthy because it contrasts to his iconclasm. He's a staunch loyalist when it is convenient and a rebel ready to throw his school under the bus when things don't go his way. (What, they don't teach the value of intellectual consistency in the Humanities Department?)
• And as he adroitly points out, students choose to go to Yale. So despite all his grousing about how terrible things have been for him and how he's a victim, he has stuck around. His persistence begs a question. If things at Yale are as intolerable as he would have his readers believe, why didn't he transfer?

Let me try this differently. Shut the fuck up. Not sure why you get your jollies attacking a college kid who isn't even registered here with totally contrived and out of context "quotes" from him, but it's cowardly and wrong. Don't post in this thread again and, if you keep this up, you and I will have a serious problem.

You obviously don't know anything about Yale. The "Party of the Right" is a debating society run by conservatives and libertarians at Yale. The "fascist" comments obviously are facetious and went over your head.

Life for conservatives on college campuses is very difficult, particularly at places like Yale. I'm not going to sit here and let you attack someone who isn't here in a completely unfair and inaccurate manner. So STFU or else.