Campus Shout-Downs Are Not Unique To America

We Americans should not feel that we have the only western universities that allow unpopular speakers (at least unpopular with the students) to be shouted-down for saying things that don't fit into the academic two-step. A recent example just occurred in the shadow of Big Ben, at the venerable and normally peaceful London School of Economics.

In a fit of nonpartisanship, the faculty of the school had invited Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon to speak on economic relations between Israel and the United Kingdom. But it almost immediately had second thoughts. Too embarrassed to withdraw the invitation, it let the speech, with question and answer sessions, go forward, but not without some healthy editorialization by the faculty member who introduced the Minister.

The original explanation for the invitation was that "the school invites such guests to critically engage and debate the perspectives of the speaker. And as a university in a democratic society, the London School of EconomicsLSE) must uphold the principles of free speech, tolerance, and pluralism." Gee, you'd almost think the Brits have a First Amendment. But that didn't stop Professor Michael Cox from first making a couple of highly derogatory remarks about Israel and its Minister before introducing Ayalon to a chorus of boos from the unruly students (and faculty).

LSE had already established its left wing credentials by uninviting conservative author Douglas Murray from chairing a debate at the school out of "security concerns." Yes, those conservatives are a pretty dangerous lot. But who exactly was "in danger?" The answer came in its invitation to another speaker who is a member of Al-Muhajiroun. That organization was later banned under the British Terrorism Act, but it didn't seem important enough for LSW to uninvite him. Jihadist propagandizers are far less dangerous than conservative authors.

Meanwhile, back to the subject at hand. Ayalon got two or three sentences into his remarks when the booing started. Students began shouting obscenities and calling him a racist, baby killer and fascist, before he could even get to the meat of his lecture. Encouraged by their own cleverness and openness, the students started delivering ad lib lectures of their own on their views of Israel. The anti-Semitism became palpable. Ayalon's words were drowned out by the ever-louder hate-fest.

Professor Cox attempted to quell the worst of the shouting, but wasn't exactly neutral in his attempts at restoring civility. He encouraged the students to boo, but to wait until the end of Ayalon's allotted time. When the actual time for debate came, following the "lecture" portion, Cox rushed to hand over the microphone to the leader of the earlier disruptions. The student had nothing to say about the actual issues, but was a top-notch agitator for ad hominem attacks. He demanded to know for whom Ayalon spoke (since he is a Minister of Israel, one would think that answer is obvious). Then he shouted "where was your father born?" Ah, very issue-oriented. He then stated the jihadist lie that Jews are a minority in Israel, and that the Jews had never been in the Holy Land prior to 1947. This is all of a fabric with Hamas's claim that Israel has no right to exist.

The school newspaper, the LSE Beaver, later reported the lecture as a "racist speech" with no evidence to support that claim. It ignored the near-squelching of Ayalon's right to speak, while concentrating on the horror of the hushing of disrupter Mira Hammad, who repeatedly interrupted Ayalon's speech with shouts of "racist," and "f--k off, Ayalon." One of the attendees tried to get Hammad to shut up, and ended up being loudly denounced as a lousy Jew. The man is actually a gentile, but why let that get in the way of a good anti-Semitic rant?

Two questions about the newspaper report occurred to me. The first is "are all British University Newspapers as viciously partisan as American University Publications?" And second, why is the LSW newspaper called The Beaver? Are there a lot of beaver in London, or in England for that matter?

So the next time you feel that American University thugs and anti-semites are unique in the West, consider the case of the London School of Economics. Apparently the modern British attitude toward views which disagree with theirs is the stiff upper lip, and a lot of shouted obscenities.