Amateur Hour at Brandeis

AsleepAtTheWheel
Sun, 18 May 2014 04:49:27 +0000

It’s official – Jill Abramson has informed Brandeis President Fred Lawrence that she will not be attending commencement exercises to receive her honorary degree.

So despite Brandeis’ best efforts at political correctness, this year there will be NO women receiving an honorary degree at commencement. The Women’s and Gender Studies department, who led the charge against Ayaan Ali, will now have to sit by and watch three men receive honorary degrees. Oh, the horror of it all.

Of course, the Women’s and Gender Studies department could use the commencement to protest the kidnapping of hundreds of girls by the Boko Haram, But in the faculty petition protesting Ali, they stated that by honoring Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis would suggest “to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam . . . thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus." So, I guess by the same logic the Boko Haram is off limits. Nothing to see here. Move along. If you can draw moral equivalency between genital mutilation, honor killings, and the forced marriages of adolescent girls on one hand, and the violence “in our midst” on the Brandeis campus on the other hand, what’s the big deal about kidnapping and enslavement?