September 2011
When David Horowitz speaks about campus
anti-Semitism and appeasement of radical Islam at the University of California,
Santa Barbara on May 26, it will be against a backdrop of soft censorship and
suppression of free speech that has come to characterize the UCSB public square.
The school’s Associated Students (AS) financial
board, heavily influenced by the UCSB Muslim Students Association acting in
concert with left-wing groups, illegally refused a funding request last week by
the College Republicans to fund the event. After a protest by students anxious
to hear Horowitz, the AS granted a part of the sum initially requested by
College Republicans, but only after encouraging a campaign portraying Horowitz
as a racist, Islamophobe, and practitioner of hate speech.
The May 26 speech will touch on themes similar
those in a previous Horowitz lecture at Santa Barbara three years ago in which
he challenged — without success — students heckling from the audience to
denounce the terror group Hamas and its intention to wipe Israel, and all Jews,
off the face of the map.
The memory of that confrontation was one factor
that led the College Republicans’ request for $2000, for audiovisual and
security expenses (and not including an honorarium) to be turned down by the
Associated Students board on May 2. Citing court decisions requiring viewpoint
neutrality when student fees are allocated for speakers, College Republicans
protested. At a raucous public forum on May 5, the AS approved $1100 for the
event. This amount was then reduced to $800 as a result of a campaign by
Islamic and left groups, which also made it clear that they intended to disrupt
the event. And then the AS further denigrated the College Republicans’ request
by allocating comparable funding for a campus wide “Anti-Hate
Workshop” to take place at the same time as Horowitz’s May 26 lecture.
Forcing some student groups to shoulder the
burden of security costs when others threaten an event with violence is
appropriately called the “heckler’s veto,” and in this case it has produced the
same speech-suppression that the AS financial board initially tried to achieve
by denying funding of the Horowitz event altogether. The discriminatory actions
of the student board caused the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
(FIRE), a non-profit dedicated to protecting free speech on campus, to send
aletter warning UCSB chancellor Henry Yang that it was “prepared to use all of
our resources to see this…through to a just and moral conclusion.”
The AS funding decisions were heavily influenced
by Ahmed Naguib, a Muslim Students Association member who sits on the
organization’s financial board. At the height of the controversy, hetold the
student paper, The Daily Nexus, “I’m familiar with the comments that Horowitz
has made. He incites hate and makes students feel very uncomfortable.” Naguib
went on to say that Horowitz had in effect forfeited his free speech rights
because he “made several racist remarks about Arabs and accused people of
terrorism last time he visited.” Naguib was supported by another student,
Sophie Armen, who presented a doctored video of Horowitz to the board meeting.
Others speaking against the appearance were representatives of the UCSB MSA and
Students for Justice in Palestine.
As to Naguib’s assertion that Horowitz was
guilty of racism and Islamophobia, the2008 speech shows no such remarks. In
fact, the speech focused on an exploration of Islamic extremism and of the
Muslim Students Association’s links, affirmed by the FBI, to the Muslim
Brotherhood and its support for terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The
video shows Horowitz repeatedly asking the numerous self-identified MSA members
who confronted him during the Q&A if they would condemn Hezbollah and Hamas.
After one evasive response after another, Horowitz was finally able to pose the
question in a way that the students could not escape.
“I’ve been waiting for one Muslim in this room
to condemn an organization which is sworn to kill Americans and kill Jews,” he
said. “That’s not too hard. One. Is there one here?”
After several seconds of silence, one voice
shouted, “No!” And some members of the audience, including faculty members,
screamed obscenities at Horowitz.
“The campaign against free speech is really the
frontline attack of the jihadists. What the Muslim Brotherhood wants is for its
critics to be silenced,” Horowitz says. “Nobody can say anything about Islamic
terror or Islamic imperialism without being ruled an indecent person, not worthy
of the public square because they’re an Islamophobe or a racist…In the name of
tolerance, we have to be intolerant toward all the critics of Islam. That’s the
Orwellian formula.”
On May 26, when round two of the battle between
David Horowitz and campus apologists for Islamic extremism takes place at Santa
Barbara, the same issues as in his last appearance will be front and
center—student support for terror groups, hatred of Israel and of Jews, and a
contempt for free speech and the open exchange of ideas.
Front Page Magazine, Wednesday, May 18.
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