PACE'S FILM POLICE
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
January 10, 2007
Columbia President Lee Bollinger apparently isn't the only Big Apple college prexy running a PC playpen: So is Pace University honcho David Caputo.
Pace flack Chris Cory admits that the school pushed a Jewish student group to cancel the showing of a documentary that irked some Muslim students.
The film, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," features such experts as John Loftus, Robert Wistrich and Steve Emerson - as well as several Muslims. It's been shown nationally, including on the Fox News Channel.
Yet complaints by Muslim students convinced Pace that young ears shouldn't be exposed to such subversive material.
Michael Abdurackhmanov, president of the school's Hillel group (which wants to show the film), says Pace explicitly threatened him with reprisals - e.g., if the group showed the film, police might be called and Hillel members could become suspects in recent hate crimes involving desecration of the Koran at Pace.
Cory denies the strong-arm tactics, but says that the school would notify cops if it feared the event might incite violence.
Fair enough on that last point. Thugs busted up a speech at Bollinger's campus in October.
How times have changed: After all, it wasn't that long ago when colleges actually encouraged free speech - including ideas that not everyone agreed with.
Today, they resort to coercive tactics against students to get them to keep their ideas quiet - all so as not to offend certain groups. Or because elitist officials have a differing point of view.
At Columbia, every flavor of anti-American, anti-West, left-wing radical is given a platform to speak.
But after students stampeded and physically drove away a scheduled speaker from an anti-open-borders group called the Minutemen Project, Columbia's president, Bollinger, did next to nothing.
Nor is this the first time Pace has cracked down on free speech. In November, officials had five students arrested for protesting against Caputo. (Students - and many faculty members, as well - are upset over high tuitions at Pace and Caputo's reported $700,000 salary.)
With America embroiled in the War on Terror, it's hard to think of a more worthy college event than showing a film like "Obsession." But the broader issue is free speech - and its selective support on campuses.
Indeed, that support's sometimes so selective, it seems like colleges are on the other side.
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