Dartblog

News is just now coming across the wire about a Parkhurst Hall wrought over how to handle some students who are proposing an “Islamofascism Awareness Week.” Emails from campus religious leaders, students, and executives in Parkhurst over how to handle the situation—whether to release a campus email, who should write it, how strongly it ought to endorse the principle of freedom of speech.

Just fascinating stuff; I do hope that I can bring you more in days to come. For now, the salient point is this: the Administration considered railing against the event, and has rapidly backtracked from that position. Progress over four years? I would say so.

UPDATE: More details and emails have filtered in. For your files I paste within this entry the two posters which, for a spell, were posted all around campus advertising the Islamofascism Awareness Week, which runs from October 22 to 26. As far as anyone can tell, all but one or two have been torn down; many have been replaced with Koranic language.

The offensive poster seems to be the first one, far above. It shows Islamists about to execute a women for some imagined offense. The claim that the photograph is somehow unjust is curious, however; it was not long ago that one of the century’s most famous photographs—of almost precisely the same thing—won a Pulitzer Prize. The Wall Street Journal published the picture of the Ayatollah’s murderous archangels; just recently the anonymous photographer, who lived under threat for two and a half decades, revealed himself.

More anon on how the College Administration wanted to respond to the Islamofascism Awareness Week, and how it was prevented from doing so.