'Hate Speech': The Left's Term for 'Opposing Viewpoints'
By Spencer Klavan
PJMedia.com
Last week, a mass email went out at Yale
University (my alma mater) protesting an upcoming
visit from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a political activist and
staunch critic of Islam. The subject line reads,
“Dear Friends: More Speech, Not Hate Speech.” The
email reveals that by “hate speech,” the writers
mean what the Left usually means when they use that
term: “opinions we don’t agree with.”
Thirty-two student organizations signed the email
under the leadership of Yale’s Muslim Student
Association (MSA). That’s a revised number after the
MSA was forced to reveal that its original list of
36 organizations was falsified. So, not a good
start.
The signees announced that they feel “highly
disrespected” by the mere fact of the invitation,
because Ali stands accused of “hate speech” against
Islam. Her very presence on campus, they argue,
would be “marginalizing” and “uncomfortable” for
Muslim students and their allies.
Let’s get a few things straight.
At five years old, Ms. Ali suffered protracted
genital mutilation at the instruction of her
grandmother, who “circumcised” the defenseless child
according to the traditional practices of her
Islamic clan. The MSA refers to these events as
“unfortunate circumstances.”
With unimaginable bravery and resourcefulness,
Ali escaped a forced marriage in Africa and sought
asylum in the Netherlands. She rose from desperation
and obscurity to obtain a seat in the Dutch
parliament. After painful introspection and
extensive academic analysis, she began courageously
speaking out against the institutionalized rape,
mutilation, and murder of Muslim women and girls.
She argued that those atrocities are supported by
the principles of Islam.
In this, according to the MSA, she “overlooked the
complexity of sociopolitical issues in
Muslim-majority countries.” Presumably it was
somewhere in between working as a translator for a
Rotterdam refugee center and obtaining an advanced
degree in political science that Ali allowed the
finer points of intercultural analysis to slip her
mind. Luckily, a clique of twenty-year-old
undergraduates sheltered behind the walls of one of
the world’s wealthiest institutions is here to
remind her.
For the crime of daring to speak out against Islamic
violence in the Netherlands, Ms. Ali was accused of
“religious discrimination” and threatened with death
by extremists. The intimidated Dutch authorities
effectively abandoned her and chased her out of the
country. They trumped up a technicality from her
fourteen-year-old citizenship application, leading
her to resign. Not to be deterred, Ali escaped to
America to continue her heroic work. Perhaps she
hoped that the U.S., at least, would protect her
right to speak.
Except that Ms. Ali has been stonewalled once
already this year from speaking at an American
university. Last April, Brandeis cancelled its plans
to award Ali an honorary degree after students
petitioned in protest against her “hate speech.” A
brazen move coming from the university that had
already honored playwright Tony Kushner, who calls
supporters of Israel “repulsive.”
And now the MSA and its co-signees have proudly
joined in the quest to silence Ali. To them, her
life’s work of defending helpless young women
against an ideology of systematic oppression
constitutes “hate speech,” and it cannot be
discussed. They offer a number of laughably
inaccurate reasons why.
Perhaps the most egregious is the supremely arrogant
assessment that a woman with Ms. Ali’s extensive
experience and acclaimed erudition “does not hold
the credentials” to discuss the religion in which
she was raised and abused, and which she has studied
throughout her life.
There’s also the assertion that Ali commits a
“radical inaccuracy” by daring to suggest that the
West is engaged in a “clash of civilizations” with
Islam. Never mind that prominent clerics like Farook
al-Mohammedi often publicly plan the total
subjugation of America — don’t call it a “clash of
civilizations.” That’s hate speech.
Finally, under the guise of an interest in
“advancing freedom of speech on campus,” the MSA
recommends that someone whom they deem to have
“representative scholarly qualifications” speak in
Ms. Ali’s place. In other words: Yale is allowed an
open conversation on the subject of Islam, as long
as all participants and their viewpoints are vetted
and pre-approved by the MSA.
These are flimsy attempts to legitimize a naked
demand for censorship. There is one reason to make
the untenable claim that Ms. Ali is anything close
to hateful, and that is to shut her up. The MSA and
its fellows are using the term “hate speech” to
describe opinions with which they disagree and which
they hope to frighten into silence. They are not the
first to do so.
Liberal arts institutions — and the nations that
establish them — are meant to be bastions of open
discourse. They have no responsibility to protect
their students from viewpoints that make them
“uncomfortable.” But all over the supposedly
tolerant West, radical leftists have used their
distaste for Ali’s viewpoints to justify silencing
her under the flexible and slanderous accusation of
“hate speech.” They succeeded in the Netherlands.
They succeeded at Brandeis. I’m proud to say they
didn’t succeed at Yale — not this time, anyway. Ali
did speak on Monday, to a packed house and a
standing ovation. Free expression — the bedrock of
academic inquiry — won the day. To that, I say,
Boola Boola: this kind of victory is becoming all
too rare.
Spencer Klavan is a gentleman and a scholar. Or just
a scholar, depending on who you ask. He studied
Greek, Latin, and Theater at Yale, so when someone
tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, "ahem, Mr.
Klavan, were you planning on, you know, holding a
paying job?" he broke out in a cold sweat and
promptly applied for graduate school. A sucker for
action movies, classic video games, and Ancient
Greek hexameter, Spencer has big dreams about
putting the gore, sex, and rock 'n roll back into
ancient literature. He does this mostly in list form
on PJM and at his blog,
The Forum
(check it out!). You can hit him up on
Facebook and
Twitter, and if you really want to get an
earful, ask him about cross country running or the
best recipes for hummus. Spencer will be pursuing a
master's in Greek and Latin Literature at Oxford
this fall.