ACADEMIC BROWNSHIRTS ON PARADE: UC – IRVINE (AGAIN)

This latest example of academic brownshirts on parade…and the useless reaction of the school to their behavior….comes to us from a repeat offender:  The University of California – Irvine.

Here, from Ari Yashar’s article at israelnationanews.com, are the particulars:

Pro-Palestinian activists turned violent last Wednesday night as they protested a pro-Israel movie screening at University of California, Irvine (UCI), and in the process hunted down a Jewish woman who was forced to hide and call for police rescue.

At least 50 anti-Israel protesters from the Muslim Student Union and the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCI physically blocked the screening of “Beneath The Helmet,” a documentary about the IDF shown in an event hosted by Students Supporting Israel at UCI as part of a series of Peace Week events.

The protesters blocked the exits to the screening while shouting “long live the intifada,” as well as other “profanity-laced chants” according to the Orange County Register. The Jewish students were forced to call police, who escorted them to safety.

Detailing the epithets further, Students Supporting Israel at UCI wrote on Facebook that the protesters “were in violation of UC Regents Hate Speech policy and were shouting various anti-Semitic statements.”

Responding to the incident, the campus’s chancellor Howard Gillman issued an email to the entire school on Thursday, warning that the protest “crossed the line of civility.”

“A group of protesters reportedly disrupted the event, blocking exit paths. Participants feared for their safety, calling on our police force for assistance,” he noted.

“While this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute. As I mentioned in a campus message at the beginning of the academic year (freespeech.uci.edu), threats, harassment, incitement and defamatory speech are not protected. We must shelter everyone’s right to speak freely – without fear or intimidation – and allow events to proceed without disruption and potential danger.”

Gillman said school officials are examining reports on the incident to decide whether legal actions should be launched in response.

As ugly as what the academic brownshirts was, the reaction from Chancellor Gillman is even uglier.

No, Chancellor Gillman, these actions did not “cross the line of civility”, they were a fascistic attempt – a successful one – to prevent freedom of speech on campus – the campus YOU are entrusted with running.

Participants, fearing for their safety, called on campus police for assistance? Why should they have had to do so?   Why didn’t YOU call for the police.  Why didn’t YOU monitor what the brownshirts made perfectly clear they would be doing?

And, most bizarrely, why do YOU frame the freedom of speech issue not as the fact that students were violently prevented from seeing the documentary, but whether the academic brownshirts should have the freedom prevent them from doing so?  Not only does this turn freedom of speech on its ear, but it makes you out to be a mindless, intellectually compromised idiot.

Academic brownshirts.  It gets harder and harder not to eliminate that second “r”.  And to justify the actions of idiots like Gillman, who – either knowingly or unknowingly – aid and abet it.