Commencement Speaker Follies: Excuse me While I change sides addition.

Conservatives are Protesting a Muslim woman with provocative views giving the commencement address at CUNY.
Why is this of interest? These are some of the same folks who, earlier this month were crying crocodile tears over Ann Coulter, and free speech, while trashing college kids for being intolerant, "Snowflakes", who live in insulted safe spaces.

Well, it didn't take long for that to turn around.

I believe that the most common word uttered after I believe in in free speech is but.
Sad.



A Muslim-American Activist’s Speech Raises Ire Even Before It’s Delivered



Linda Sarsour, one of the most prominent Muslim-American activists in New York, says the messages have been arriving by the hour recently.

“Your time is coming.”

“A good Arab is a dead Arab.”

“You’re getting two bullets in your head.”

Ms. Sarsour, one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, has tackled issues like immigration policy, mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk and the New York Police Department’s spying operation on Muslims — all of which have largely inured her to hate-tinged criticism.

But it is the commencement address she is to deliver next week to about 100 students at the City University of New York School of Public Health that she says has drawn the most hostility and ire she has ever experienced.

“Linda Sarsour is a Sharia-loving, terrorist-embracing, Jew-hating, ticking time bomb of progressive horror,” the conservative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos said at a rally on Thursday outside CUNY’s main office, as protesters held signs with images associated with the often racist and anti-Semitic language used by what is known as the alt-right, a far-right, white nationalist movement.

The controversy over Ms. Sarsour’s appearance is the latest dispute in a heated national dialogue over free speech on university campuses.




But in this instance, the roles have been reversed. Other protests have largely pitted left-wing students against conservative speakers like Mr. Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Gavin McInnes and Charles Murray. This time, conservatives are leading the charge against Ms. Sarsour.

Her critics are a strange mix, including right-leaning Jews and Zionists, commentators like Pamela Geller, and some members of the alt-right.

They accuse her of sympathizing with terrorists, supporting Sharia law and anti-Semitism for statements she has made about politics in the Middle East.

The CUNY chancellor, James B. Milliken, has defended the appearance on the basis of free speech, and a group of CUNY professors, some prominent progressives and liberal Jewish groups have spoken in her support.

Fred Smith Jr., a constitutional scholar and assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said the controversy was a reminder of the bipartisan nature of the outcry over free-speech issues.

“There are a few people who have been very effective in branding the left at shutting down free speech, but the moment they are confronted with leftist speech they don’t like, they are equally outraged and poised to suppress that speech,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the answer for either side. The more you try to suppress speech, the more the ideas of the suppressed speaker become salient to more people. It makes the person more well known and attracts more people to those ideas.”

The debate about Ms. Sarsour’s speech began last month with Dov Hikind, a conservative Democratic state assemblyman who represents a largely Orthodox community in Brooklyn. Mr. Hikind said Ms. Sarsour should not have been chosen, pointing to her recent appearance in Chicago with Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in Israel of playing a role in the bombing of a supermarket that killed two civilians in 1969.





https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/nyregion/linda-sarsour-cuny-speech-protests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

Last edited by Goose (5/27/2017 5:05 am)