AA's "Fat Flier" Got Whole Row
Ashley Dupre On Tiger Woods' Babes: "At Least I Kept My Mouth Shut"
Same-Sex Marriage Blame Game Aims at Paterson, Addabbo
Rihanna's Random Airport Search
Wife Tries To Abort And Poison Husband's Lovechild
Wednesday night's clash between immigration "watchdog" group the Minutemen and Columbia University student protesters has even pulled Mayor Bloomberg into the frazy. During his radio show, Mayor Bloomberg said university president Lee Bollinger has "got to get his hands around this. There are too many incidents at the same school where people get censored." Case in point: School of International Affairs needing to uninvite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from speaking because the school couldn't coordinate security logistics in time. Of course, it is interesting that Bollinger's specialty is free speech. Anyway, Bollinger released a university-wide statement:
Columbia University has always been, and will always be, a place where students and faculty engage directly with important public issues. We are justifiably proud of the traditions here of intellectual inquiry and vigorous debate. The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.The Minutemen are calling the protest, where students appeared onstage while Minutemen leader Jim Gilchrist was about to speak, a "riot", while students involved still contend that the violence (punching, kicking) was caused by the Minutemen and College Republicans.Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views...
...It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.
University personnel are also evaluating event management practices that are specifically intended to help event organizers, participants and protestors maintain a safe environment in which to engage in meaningful and sometimes contentious debate across the spectrum of academic and political issues. These are some of the many steps we intend to take in the weeks ahead to address this matter in our community...
...Let me reaffirm: In a society committed to free speech, there will inevitably be times when speakers use words that anger, provoke, and even cause pain. Then, more than ever, we are called on to maintain our courage to confront bad words with better words. That is the hallmark of a university and of our democratic society. It is also one of our central safeguards against the impulses of intolerance that always threaten to engulf our commitment to proper respect for every person.
Meanwhile, Columbia officials will be looking at Facebook for "information and images posted on sutdents' ...profiles as part of its intestigation," according to the Columbia Spectator. It's still unclear what action the University will take, though officials have been meeting with a few of the groups.
YouTube clip of the fracas from CTV News has video footage
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Oh Scott, you're right Republicans would never act that way. Damn liberals.
hah.
"free speech, but only if you agree with us"
North Korea, Soviet Union and american university. Way to go! New axis of hatred.
I see the mayor didn't listen to his own actions restricting free speech with his "permit" system and the tactics during the RNC with his orange netting.
Way to go, bloomberg.
Do what I say, not what I do.
Columbia University is just another example of of the academic sewers that pass for "centers of higher learning" in the U.S. Populated by wacademic professors who are mostly Stalinists, Marxists, Maoists, Arafatists, Castroites and Jew-haters, they are the Fifth Columnists who act as point men and women for the Jihadists and Islamofacists wanting to murder Americans and destroy us...... Remember CU invited the despot Chavez to speak and Holocaust denying nuclear homicidal maniac President of Iran to speak also...Remember, your tax dollars support this...
How is my tax dollars supporting Columbia University? Whereas, MY tax dollars are spent on Lawyers, NYPD etc to squelch free speech in MY city.
Storming the stage was probably a bit overboard, but I fully support shouting this asshole down. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from very vocal, very persistent criticism.
maybe CC should add an ettiquette course to the core.
[5] you know, your tax money does support CU, i'm sure they take government grants, and they are run as a nonprofit so they escape a large part of the corporate tax burden.
and max, why not just let the guy speak? nobody is making you listen. and yeah, freedom speech doesn't proctect one from vocal criticism, but throwing a temper tantrum and crying to mommy every time you hear something that theatens your petit-bourgois moral framework doesn't constructively get your point across, if there's one at all.
Let's go to the videotape and see who really wanted violence. Mr. blond, dark shirt, cheap shot.
You must not have much faith in your position if words scare you so much and cause you to scream and use violence. Welcome to Taliban University. Check your beliefs at the door.
Way to go Columbia! Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama and Hugo Chavez must be very, very proud of you!
-DM
PS: Did this event take place in the Cindy Sheehan Auditorium of Free Speech?
Thank you Pres. Bollinger,
You make me proud to be a Columbia Alum.
Anyone who tries to put a gag order on a group, even if that group is fascist, is still a fascist. Fascist University. Where to I enroll? Or rather submit?
shouldn't those kids be wearing brown shirts?
I think the blond kid rushing the stage was a brown shirt. Don't you know him?
He's all over that video.
While right to free speech should not be interfered with, especially within the academy, this argument occludes a deeper and more troubling issue: the Minutemen are a fundamentally racist organization whose actions as an armed militia are disturbing to say the least, particulary because this action is based on the dehumanization of other human beings. No matter political or State affiliation, or even in terms whether actions are legal or not within the present framework, no human being deserves to be hunted down like an animal in the name of a narrowly proscribed "justice". The hatred and abuse of immigrants, particularly Latinos, has become a socially acceptable form of racism in the present moment, but this current acceptability is by no means an indication of its moral correctness--history, of course, offers no shortage of examples on this point. The very fact that the ideologies of organizations such as the Minutemen have become an acceptable point of interest for groups such as the College Republicans points to a much deeper social problem than whether or not Universities are "facist". True change comes from real involvement with one's own government and its policies (this is a democracy after all), not from the inhumane treament of fellow human beings.
AHHH Columbia University.........
Yes the elitist intellectualist leftists response to an opposing argument?
Throw a temper tantrum and scream and yell so the other side can't be heard.
Thank god those magnificent leftist champions of free speech that we are giving 20-40K a year to educate our children are truly ensuring open and honest debate and free speech for all.
This just makes me sick as does any moron who would deny the left wing facist culture that permeates our higher education institutions like a deadly cancer.
AC, just fucking die you curmudgeon. You're right: we should start inculcating our kids with the 'anti-leftwing' curriculum your party espouses.
What's that called again? Creationism?
Fucking moron.
There is something you liberals are missing. These people south of the border are criminals, they are in this country illeaglly. What makes them any better than the other people of the world who wants to come here? I grew up with mexicans, and I can say truthfully they are looking for freebies, a free ride on our system. They will work if there is no other way to get what they want. I lived in the same neighborhood with them, you could not leave anything of value sitting in your yard without them coming to take it. I married a european woman, she went to the trouble of learning to speak and read english, what makes these mexicans any better than her. I saw a man and woman with 2 children crying at an embassy in Moscow, they were crying because they got their visa application turn down by the US INS. Here were some highly educated people turned away and yet you liberals are fighting to let a bunch illiterate aliens south of the border into this country, (illeaglly no less). If these people wants to come to this country then they must get in line like the rest of the people in the world has to and do it leaglly, not like a bunch of criminal thugs sneaking accross the border at nite. These mexicans can get american citizenship very easy if they would join our military, yet they are too lazy to do that, english thay are too lazy to do that and I have to press 1 for english to do personal business. I am a vereran, you liberals have no concept of what freedom means in this country.
I agree that Mexicans coming over the border is illegal and that it needs to stop.
However, when has vigilatism been legalized? I must have missed that. You're worried about some college kids rushing a stage when the people they're rallying against basically shoot to kill when they disagree with someone. Is there a hint of hypocrisy there, or is that my radical ivy league education spinning the notion of morality and justice?
As a veteran, I wonder if you're pleased at the erosion of the freedoms you fought for. Illegal wiretapping, invasions of privacy, all of the wholesale rewriting or wanton and willful ignorance of the law by this sham of a president you probably support.
I just don't understand what kind of country you people envision living in down the line - what you're leaving your kids and grandchildren to contend with. You right-wingers have a rich history of railing against communism and yet your executive branch is sowing the seeds for a KGB-run style state.
As the ending of Pelham 123 goes.
You sneezed.
GOTYA, (dun dun, dun dun) you racist. Just admit you're racist. If you're against PC talk, which I'm positive that you are, then just say it.
I would be proud to call myself an alum of that university.
The Minutemen are a bunch of racist assholes. They have the right to be racist assholes; we have the right to call them on that insipid viewpoint.
Interesting that the College Republicans and Minutemen were actually the ones instigating physical violence ; good thing the protestors brought along a camera to protect themselves from the inevitable smear job.
Hell, O'Reilly already called it a 'left wing jihad'. What a buffoon.
What vigilatism? Who have they shot and when did they shoot? Since when is it a crime to watch for illeagle activity? I am not pleased by erosion of freedoms and liberties, I did contact my elected represenatives opposing the patriot act. I shudder to think that someone like Bill clinton could have used this. As for the abuses of this president, where were you when Clinton and company was violating law after law. FBI files. White water. Illegal campaign contributions. Necuelar secrets to china? The list goes on and on. I am very angry at Bush for his support of illegal aliens in this country. Where is your outrage? Wiretaps- where were you when every president since IKE has been doing this? Yes this does include Clinton. I would say you are absolutly right about your radical ivy league education spinning the notion of morality and justice on your part. The problem with colledge kids and colledge teachers, they do not know what the real world is like outside of a classroom. I know all too well the problems illeagles has caused this country, I detect a note of hypocrisy on your part, condoning their illegal activities. As for you question of what kind of country I envision, I want a country that punishes wrong doing by acts of people. What I see the liberals proposing for this country is totally wrong, they have the notion if it feels good then do it. I for one do not want my tax dollars to support illegal aliens, and if they want to come here, then damn it, do it legally.
It's nice to see these socialist moonbats screaming racial slurs at a black man who was part of the minutemen all the while screaming that the minute men are racists.
Fucking idiotic hypocrites.
But that's par for the course for ab American liberal.
Liberals are retarded!! i am a hispanic immigrant (u.s. citizen, and have never been illegal in this country), and I am ashamed of my race by seeing these morons on stage! If we have had a crazy "open borders" person on stage, and us the republicans would have interrupted the speech with banners, people would have gone nuts! these people have broken the principle of freedom of speech. i love the minutemen, and someday I will donate to this cause. Can you believe it? I heard in a class that illegals (i don't bite the "undocumented" bullXXit) should vote because what happens in this country affects them. Well, then we should go to freaking Mexico, protest in English and demand that they let us vote. I would vote for one child policy in Mexico. Maybe if they did not have many children they would not need to come here and would be happy farming. I cannot believe that stupid girl compared the minutement to the KKK. If I was an African American I would be offended by that comment. Blacks have suffered through discrimination, murder, without having a choice. If Mexicans don't like what they see, they can get the heck out!! Damn liberals