Not everything going on in the environment of modern colleges is bad. Here is a success story. From Front Page Magazine:
Last fall, Pace University student Michael Abdurakhmanov tried to hold a screening of Obsession, a documentary about radical Islam, on his campus. Hoping to show that Islam is home to moderates as well as extremists, and that it is important to distinguish between the two camps, he unexpectedly found himself beset by opposition. Muslim students angrily rejected the idea. University administrators took an even harder line, with the school’s dean ominously warning Abdurakhmanov that showing the film could be considered a “hate crime,” and intimating, less than subtly, that police might be invited to sift through his personal record.
Now Abdurakhmanov has received restitution in a big way. Not only has Pace president David Caputo tendered a personal apology to Abdurakhmanov for the school’s strong-arm tactics, but yesterday marked the first-ever “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day,” a nationwide effort to call attention to the threat of militant Islam by holding a mass-screening of the film that Abdurakhmanov’s school, quite literally, didn’t want him to see: Obsession. In total, 96 colleges and universities, among them Pace University, Columbia, Duke, and other prominent schools, together with three high schools and two military bases, showed the film, which was sponsored by the Terrorism Awareness Project, a new program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
David Horowitz, the center’s president, called the event “the most extensive demonstration by conservative college students ever.” Horowitz added that the event represented a clear challenge to academic faculty who, in the name of political correctness, have sought to shut down debate about Islamic extremism. “University administrators, caving to pressures from forces sympathetic to the Islamic terrorists have suppressed the showing of the film Obsession in the name of ‘sensitivity,’ which in an age of political correctness is the Orwellian term for closing down debate on American campuses,” Horowitz said. “The simultaneous showing of a film exposing the Islamist threat at nearly 100 universities is a tremendous victory for the forces of freedom and for intellectual diversity, which are now under attack.”
Reports from many of the participating schools lent support to that impression. Even as many schools successfully screened the film, many students found themselves pressured -- and in some cases openly harassed -- to cancel the event. They resisted, and showed the film anyway.
Last fall, Pace University student Michael Abdurakhmanov tried to hold a screening of Obsession, a documentary about radical Islam, on his campus. Hoping to show that Islam is home to moderates as well as extremists, and that it is important to distinguish between the two camps, he unexpectedly found himself beset by opposition. Muslim students angrily rejected the idea. University administrators took an even harder line, with the school’s dean ominously warning Abdurakhmanov that showing the film could be considered a “hate crime,” and intimating, less than subtly, that police might be invited to sift through his personal record.
Now Abdurakhmanov has received restitution in a big way. Not only has Pace president David Caputo tendered a personal apology to Abdurakhmanov for the school’s strong-arm tactics, but yesterday marked the first-ever “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day,” a nationwide effort to call attention to the threat of militant Islam by holding a mass-screening of the film that Abdurakhmanov’s school, quite literally, didn’t want him to see: Obsession. In total, 96 colleges and universities, among them Pace University, Columbia, Duke, and other prominent schools, together with three high schools and two military bases, showed the film, which was sponsored by the Terrorism Awareness Project, a new program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
David Horowitz, the center’s president, called the event “the most extensive demonstration by conservative college students ever.” Horowitz added that the event represented a clear challenge to academic faculty who, in the name of political correctness, have sought to shut down debate about Islamic extremism. “University administrators, caving to pressures from forces sympathetic to the Islamic terrorists have suppressed the showing of the film Obsession in the name of ‘sensitivity,’ which in an age of political correctness is the Orwellian term for closing down debate on American campuses,” Horowitz said. “The simultaneous showing of a film exposing the Islamist threat at nearly 100 universities is a tremendous victory for the forces of freedom and for intellectual diversity, which are now under attack.”
Reports from many of the participating schools lent support to that impression. Even as many schools successfully screened the film, many students found themselves pressured -- and in some cases openly harassed -- to cancel the event. They resisted, and showed the film anyway.
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