Danish Cartoons: New York University Submits to Dhimmitude

Ayn Rand Institute: NYU’s Surrender Underscores Need to Display
Danish Cartoons

I was scheduled to attend the Ayn Rand Institute’s panel discussion tomorrow night on the Free Speech, Danish Cartoons controversy at New York University. I just received the missive from the institute. NYU is shutting down the innocuous toons. I can’t go. Read it and weep. Needless to say, I am …………….speechless;

NYU’s Surrender Underscores Need to Display Danish
Cartoons

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Irvine, CA–"In a seemingly mundane decision, New York
University has sacrificed the principle underlying its flourishing and the
survival of civilization–free speech," said Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand
Institute. NYU is refusing to protect
a student group’s right to display the
Danish cartoons of Mohammad at a panel discussion on free speech on March
29.

The group’s event was to be open to the public, but at the last
minute NYU retreated. Under the pretense of maintaining campus security, the
administration contradicted its own stated policy on free speech by requiring
that, if the cartoons are displayed, the event be limited only to "members of
the NYU community." The student group now must turn away more than 150 members
of the public who had planned to attend the panel.

"The university’s
shameful appeasement of Muslim and anti-free-speech groups–which have vowed to
protest the event–underscores the urgent need to display the cartoons in
defense of freedom of speech," said Dr. Brook.

"Free speech protects the
rational mind: it is the freedom to think, to reach conclusions and express
one’s views without fear of coercion of any kind. And it must include the right
to express unpopular and offensive views, including outright criticism of
religion. NYU–which like other universities grants tenure to protect
intellectual freedom–ought to recognize the crucial importance of this
principle and defend it.

"If intimidation and threats are allowed to
compel writers, cartoonists, thinkers and institutions of learning into
self-censorship, the right to free speech is lost. If Muslims are allowed to
pressure critics of Islam into silence, critics of religion will be next. And
then everyone else."

Panel Discussion on
the Danish Cartoons

Panelists: Peter
Schwartz, former chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand
Institute and author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal
for America; Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation
for Individual Rights in Education; Andrew Bostom, author of
The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims; and
Jonathan Leaf, New York Press editor who resigned over
his paper’s decision not to publish the Danish
cartoons.

Moderator: Dr. Harry Binswanger, professor of
philosophy and member of the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand
Institute.

What is planned: (1) A display of the
controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad. (2) A panel discussion and Q
& A on the meaning of the worldwide reaction to the
cartoons.

Where: New York University, 60 Washington
Square South at NYU Kimmel Center, Eisner and Lubin Auditorium (4th Floor), NY,
NY 10012

When: March 29, 2006, 7 to 10
PM

Summary: ARI’s Peter Schwartz will participate in a panel discussion
on the Mohammad cartoon controversy. He will explain: Why the eruption of
violence and the issuance of death threats make completely irrelevant the
question of whether the cartoons are in bad taste. Why the idea that freedom of
the press must be "coupled with press responsibility" means that free speech is
not a right, but a fleeting permission. Why every Western newspaper and media
outlet should have immediately re-published or shown the cartoons in solidarity
with the cartoonists. Why the cowardly and appeasing response of many Western
governments–including our own–will only invite further aggression. Other
panelists will present their own views.

So does this mean I can’t go?  This New York City damn it!

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for
one sight of New York’s skyline. The sky over New York and the will of man made
visible. I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw
myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." Ayn
Rand

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