Amateur Hour at Brandeis

gardenelf
Sat, 12 Apr 2014 16:54:24 +0000

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been a magnificent advocate for the rights of women and girls globally and has rightfully cast a spotlight on the role of religion in justifying the oppression of women. However the link she posits between Islam and violence is a source of bitter controversy. The failure of the Brandeis administration to recognize this when they invited her to be the commencement speaker was indeed a colossal failure of due diligence. Is violence and misogyny inherent in Islam, as Hirsi Ali suggests, or does it represent hijacking of the religion by extremists? Searching for “truth even unto its innermost parts” on this question requires that different points of view be heard. And a college commencement speech is not a forum, nor does it typically allow for nuanced discussion.

One can only speculate on what might have happened had Hirsi Ali simply been given an honorary degree for her work on women’s’ rights and invited to the campus to discuss Islam in a forum type setting, rather than as the commencement speaker. Such a dialogue was rendered impossible after Brandeis insulted her by rescinding the degree. But should graduating Muslim students have been expected to sit through a commencement address to hear their religion be castigated? Awarding her the degree but cancelling the speech could legitimately have been called muzzling her. There were truly no good outcomes in this unfortunate situation. (A silver lining for Hirsi Ali is that as a result of Brandeis’ action her speech, What I Would Have Said at Brandeis, was printed in the Wall Street Journal and reached far more people than it would have purely as the commencement address at Brandeis.)

Brandeis is not the first university to unintentionally ignite a firestorm in its choice of commencement speaker, nor is it likely to be the last. The question is what the administration’s bungling of this matter has to do with the education of its students. As @B77 has pointed out, the qualities that make Brandeis great are its distinguished faculty and the terrific educational opportunities afforded by embedding the intimate learning environment of a liberal arts college within a world-class research university. Proximity to Boston, arguably one of the best college towns in the nation, is another plus. These qualities will endure long after this regrettable incident has receded into the past.