Tuesday night at the University of Scranton some members of the sponsoring group were nervous. The university had taken much longer to approve my speaking at the campus than they had taken to approve other speakers, and had made the students answer all sorts of questions about whether the event would be in keeping with the mission of the university.
How about this for the mission of a university? Should it perchance be "the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth" Should it be a place where "inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge"? (Thus Cardinal Newman.) Or should it be an indoctrination house for propagandists to stifle inquiry into and speculation about issues they wish not to be explored, as they interfere with the thrust of their propaganda?
I suspect they've already made their choice between those two at the University of Scranton, as well as at other once-fine universities all across the country, but they did let me speak Tuesday night. However, one of the members of the sponsoring group invited the local imam to come to the talk and make a five-minute rebuttal address after I spoke. I never did get the full story on this, but apparently he wanted to show the university administrators that the group was willing to air all points of view. I was asked Tuesday afternoon whether or not it would be acceptable to me if the imam spoke, and I said Absolutely Not. The group nevertheless seems to have asked him to speak, but he did not reply to their invitation.
Why did I oppose having the imam speak after me, when I profess to be so open to discussion and debate? Because what was proposed was not a debate or a dialogue, but my speech and his rebuttal. I would be happy to debate him if a debate were set up, and happy to answer his questions if he had deigned to show up at the talk, but not happy to have him come in to "correct" my remarks, as if there really were something wrong with what I am saying, such that someone is needed to come in afterward, smooth ruffled feathers, and issue a disclaimer.
Thus when I got to the venue I urged the sponsoring group not to allow themselves to be intimidated. Of course, that's easy for me to say: I don't have to live there for four years. I have immense respect for every member of this group, including the young man who suggested that the imam come in, because they hold to their principles under tremendous and often outrageous pressure from university administrators and their fellow students. Nevertheless, they and all students who are opposing the jihad and standing up for other politically incorrect positions should avoid allowing themselves to be put on the defensive and even tacitly accepting the Leftist/Jihadist line that what the anti-jihad stands for is bigotry, racism, hate, etc. It isn't. It is freedom, it is human rights, it is Western civilization, it is nothing for which to apologize, nothing of which to be ashamed.
Anyway, during the talk itself, which was apparently attended by at least some members of the campus MSA chapter, I noticed a number of students rolling their eyes and smiling in amused disgust at the egregious things I was saying. Since they did this frequently throughout the talk, I was ready for a barrage of hostile questions during the Q-and-A period. But none materialized. Not a single one of the eye-rollers approached the microphone to ask me even one question. So after a few questions from people in the audience who were sympathetic to what I was saying, the evening ended somewhat prematurely.
So all the MESA Nostra professors and all the MSA's loudly insist that I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet none of them dares to even try to prove it when I am right in front of them. Isn't that interesting?
The university is, said Newman, "a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge." That is an ideal. It is not the University of Scranton, or much of anywhere else that goes by the name of university these days.
Robert-
How many in the audience? The size of the university?
Am I the only one who has been stunned at the miniscule audiences you get visiting campuses? I remember you mentioning 40-50 at one large university. I know crappy authors who get more than that to come to a reading at a small college.
Poetcomic:
At Scranton they had very little time to publicize the event after the university approved it. I believe about 60 people were there. At Penn State, about 30. At University of Wisconsin-Madison, about 300. At University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about 100. About 50 or so at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. About 120 last night at SUNY-Stonybrook.
Madison was a good crowd, and last night's filled the hall we were given. I suspect that staying away from such events is another part of the new strategy delineated here:
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=709E3BE8-026B-4A15-8155-3117416A593B
Don't make a scene, don't ask questions, don't even show up -- and the event gets no publicity.
Or maybe it's because no one much cares about the jihad anymore.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I bet that students who attend Spencer's lectures are monitored by Muslim sympathizers and lefties and that information is then sent to their professors and others who can make life hard for the attendees.
Either that or most of the students are already so indoctrinated that only a tiny minority still have any independent thinking are left.
As for the silent treatment I suspect that many of Spencer's detractors can't debate him for the simple fact all they have is agit-prop and the Islamic texts themselves and neither helps them as presenting Islam as a harmless religion.
And I've seen this personally when I confronted liberals on certain subjects they pretended to know but didn't - they just shut up.
My wife takes graduate courses at the University and we did not even know about it.
If we did I certianly would have been in attendance.
Very frustrating.....
The opposite of love is indifference.
The minuscule audiences would seem to be in line with the agenda of the university. Those who go against the PC orthodoxy are shunned. Your opponents couldn't go and cause a ruckus or they would be exposed for their intolerance.
What will happen to those who sponsored your appearance? That they had any reason to be nervous is a shame.
"Or maybe it's because no one much cares about the jihad anymore"
I think that it is obvious they are so sure that once the annointed one has assumed the throne, and obamamania has settled in over the world, all will be good.
Jihad will be no more, all will be peaceful.
Later
Albert
The historic role of the university was once the "disinterested pursuit of knowledge"...
That has been replaced by "agent of social change."
It's just taken as a given that any and all "social change" is automatically benign.
With few exceptions, the liberal arts departments of America's colleges and universities have become bastions of political correctness, multiculturalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism (often disguised as opposition to Israel) and anti-Westernism. It's sad to see our institutions of higher learning become so stupid in that special kind of way that only intellectuals can engage in.
Ah yes, Cardinal Newman, the Monophysite in the Mirror. Robert's familiarity with him carries its own assurances.
"So all the MESA Nostra professors and all the MSA's loudly insist that I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet none of them dares to even try to prove it when I am right in front of them. Isn't that interesting?"
Robert,
I think its more than interesting.
In fact......
Its game, set and match!
"Don't make a scene, don't ask questions, don't even show up -- and the event gets no publicity."
"Or maybe it's because no one much cares about the jihad anymore."
I would have to lean towards the former. People in general have a morbid curiosity for supposed contraversial. Remember the results of the negative press spearheaded by Foxman and the ADL given to Gibson's "Passion of the Christ"?
Backlash...to a tune of about 600 million or so gross.
The new strategy that the MSA has adopted will not work unless Islam ceases to be what it is currently.
Thanks for all your efforts.
The main problem is that the american kids have been brain washed and the american people are scared of there lively hood with every news mrdia telling us its 15 crazed muslims doing allthe damage with 15 trillon frequent flyer miles.
The people are also focused on there money right now not realizeing that its part of the attack on this nation with alliances with jihadists and russia and china to take us out when it fits.
Isaw on live leak couple nights ago berzinski or what ever his name is talk on an interview with cnn old i believe where he states obama got into harvard with the request to saudi arabia from rasheed khalid and saudi arabia paid for it knowing that harvard is very well paid by saudi money.
this makes me wonder how a man who like me can barely work a computer can find this and the news media can only find stories on how palin got her clothes i find this with corsi findings in kenya as proof not only is obama a muslim but a well planted one.
Ontop of this i also find that reverend wright was in the nation of islam and i start to wonder is there connections im only seeing as far as obama being part of a fifth column i honestly did not believe obama was a muslim till i started looking and now not only do i have no doubt i believe hes a plant.
OT, but I was just reading a Charles Krauthammer column and noticed he used the phrase "Islamic Jihadism".
I like it.
Beats the other code-words for Islam, such as "radical Islam", "Islamic extremists", etc. There's no qualifier, like the others.
Regardless of the size of the crowd, you can't give up, Robert. You are the face of Jihadwatch and we're all counting on you.
So it was the strong silent treatment, and not the merely silent treatment?
Fifty people hearing the truth is better than no one hearing it.
Quit grousing and whining. Look at show biz people, either change the venue or the act if the show doesn't sell. I'm sick of this "poor ole me, victim of the great PC conspiracy". I'm sure there are death camp and gulag survivors who hearts are broken, maybe they'll send you a food package.
One thing I don't think you have to worry about, Robert, is waning interest in the jihad.
I have a funny feeling jihadists won't stand for it.
So, are you then disappointed at what Hugh calls "the silent treatment?" Regularly, you fearlessly wade into so many pools filled with gators I'd think you'd welcome the Dark Side's new cold-shoulder strategy. Good riddance, I figure. I know I'm not the only one who hopes against hope that the Islamists will just go away.
Now, on the other hand, if you're bemoaning the drop-off in new search-engine traffic to this, the finest blog on planet Earth, that drop-off would have something to do with the glaring yellow McAfee "caution" rating assigned to JW/DW at the bottom of my FireFox 3 browser window. If you haven't noticed any reduction in new search-engine referrals, my guess is you soon will. I've tried fighting this little battle on your behalf--I even forwarded my essay "Canned Meat" to McAfee, hoping to embarrass them into changing your rating back to green--but I'm pretty certain they will remain implacable until you lend the matter your personal attention.
If there's no one to hear the mighty tree falling in the forest, did it really fall? I'm no philosopher, but it sounds like a loaded question to me.
Those fifty here, a few hundred there had better be packing WMD if that's all we've got in the counter-jihad.
I'd be concerned with those people just starting to get a clue, an inkling--their light bulbs finally turning on--typing "global jihad" into the Google search box for the very first time. They'll probably not get as far as my listing, at about 245 out of 500,000+ results for that wide-open search string, but Jihad Watch ranks second or third (sometimes first, I'm sure, since the Google ranking algorithms are many-splendored but mysterious things). I think it's a crying shame if some of those seekers pass you by, Robert, just when they most need to find you, simply because of a flawed or biased rating system used by millions of virtual surfers worldwide.
For those not in the listening audience, the majestic tree may as well have never existed at all.
Never mind. I see Morris found his way here.
Or maybe that was my point. ;)
Best regards,
HAID
Coincidentally, I just viewed a video in which Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn agree with this mission . . .to the extent it applies to 'scholars' (cough, choke gasp) like Ward Churchill and absent minded professors like self described Ayers. These people have consumed far more than their fair share of oxygen
I agree with tanstaafl. Fifty people is better than none.
And...six degrees of separation.
It is said that every person has, roughly speaking, an 'acquaintanceship circle' of around 150 people: some kin, some friends, some workmates.
So: if even ten or twenty out of that fifty understood what you were saying, Mr Spencer, and were convinced, then in various ways they will communicate it to their 'circle'.
You do not know how far, or how fast, the word will travel.
You do not know how many of those fifty were people who hadn't heard you speak before, hadn't read your books...but may, right now, be ordering those books, and sitting down to read them.
And when they have done so, will they in turn be sending their nearest and dearest the 'PIG to Islam and the Crusades', perhaps packaged with 'Islam: What the West Needs to Know', as a Christmas present this year, together with a covering note to the effect - 'hey, I heard this guy speak, he's real nice and he's real sharp and he knows his onions - BELIEVE HIM!'?
I wondered if anyone noticed the article today about the middle school in Missouri where students played "hit the Jew" for the day? Imagine if they played "hit the Muslim"! Do we think that would make the cover the NY Times? How IS it that so many universities are so consumed with acquainting their students with Islam? This is hardly the America I grew up in and I am 53: a product of the crazy 60s and self-indulgent 70s. When I tell my own kids how much better things used to be, I find myself sounding like my Mom when she expressed disgust with the Rolling Stones haircuts and crazy clothes (and THEY were wearing shirts and ties) on Ed Sullivan. Is anyone else getting as discouraged as I find myself over an American where a marginal charlatan like Obama could POSSIBLY become POTUS?
Morris Minor:
That's always good advice, but I don't believe I was. I was merely pointing out some recent phenomena in the ongoing drama of the Leftist/jihadist stranglehold on campus, and our efforts to break it. This involves the jihadists and their allies and dupes refraining from asking questions, and not showing up at all. Pointing this out is not whining about it.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I'm sick of this "poor ole me, victim of the great PC conspiracy". I'm sure there are death camp and gulag survivors who hearts are broken, maybe they'll send you a food package.
Posted by: MorrisMinor
Is there any positive place to put that? How about file 13, under 'trash can liner'.
MorrisMinor,
Robert's post didn't come across, to me, as "grousing and whining."
He described what happened at the event (and I know that I, and some other readers, were interested in reading about this), as he often does for such events, and gave some thoughts on the state of discourse in universities these days.
I have a suggestion for Morris Minor: Criticize Islam in public, or at universities, and then try to give us a cheerful uplifting report on how it went over. (Don't forget to hire security).