Ralph, your heart is often in the right place, but tout expliquer, n'est pas tout pardoner.

I don't try to justify Jello Biafra. Why do you try to justify David Horowitz?

I'm not defending D.H. I'm pointing out an absurd double-standard regarding speakers. But you already knew that, don't you Prof. Luker?

PS

Am I the only person here who reads regret in Bacchus' statement that there were cops at Horowitz' speech to prevent Bacchus and company from driving him off.

BTW, I don't see Horowitz as a horror -- just a frequently obnoxious provocateur. He is really good at getting so-called "liberals" to reveal their brownshirt tendencies.

"Brownshirt"? Richard, I thought that we'd declared a truce? "Brownshirt" is a word reserved by people like me for throwing at people like you but choose not to do so because of respect and because I know it would be b...s....
On the basis of what accomplishment would DH be invited to any self-respecting place to speak about anything? I'm not in favor of shouting him down. I just can't imagine why any intelligent conservative would think that he well represents a cause worth defending -- and conservatism _is_ worth defending. By such reasoning, a liberal would demand Michael Moore simply because he sticks a finger in a conservative eye. Academic communities shouldn't be plagued by either of them.

Don't saddle me with DH, OK? And I was making a distinction between real liberals like Harvey Silverglate, and the phoney variety like James Freedman. It was poorly worded, I'll grant you ("so-called liberals" doesn't make the distinction clear enough).

Come on Prof. Luker, let's not pretend there a any standards for speakers, as long as they are on the left.

This Cornell incident reminds me a lot of an incident more than 15 years ago at Columbia.

A black and a white student bumped while dancing at a party at Ferris Booth. Words were exchanged. The black student left, gathered some friends from Harlem, and waited outside for the white student's exit. The black youth involved in the incident then, with his crew, accosted the student, demanding that he give them "respect" -- that is, crawl. He refused, and so they jumped him.

Exiting Ferris Booth at that time were some Columbia football players, who came to the student's rescue, and chased off the attackers. A few days later, close to 400 residents of Harlem protested on the steps of Lowe Library. What did Columbia do? They suspended the white student for a year.

Too bad for Columbia that the student's father was a Wall Street lawyer, who promptly filed suit against Columbia. Columbia delayed and delayed, and then on the eve of the trial, they reinstated the student and reached an out of court settlement extremely advantageous to the student (a six figure sum was paid to make him drop the suit). I can only guess at the motivations of Columbia, but Jack Greenberg was Dean, and it wouldn't look too good if the great NAACP lawyer lost a civil rights suit to a white boy, would it?

If there's a threat in the email, it's highly ambiguous at best. Here is the "threatening" sentence: "The internet is making it more difficult for incompetent people like you to hide behind the walls of academia."

In another response you wrote: "You do not _know_ that the author of the e-mail had nothing to do with the campus Republicans and I do not _know_ that the author did have anything to do with them." That's the kind of logic that the historian organizations used to praise Bellesiles and pillory his political opponents. The historians maliciously assumed that those "threatening" Bellesiles were part of the group of gun rights activists and pro-gun rights amateur historians denouncing work, because they want an excuse to attack people they disagreed with politically. Likewise, if the email is the only reason for cancelling the meeting, the administrator Rorie maliciously used its ambiguous language, sympathy for the Republicans' cause and its link to the school newspaper article written by one of the conservative students as an excuse to avoid what would probably have been a contentious meeting.

Here is what Rorie said when she canceled the meeting:
"In light of the attached email and link it is clear that you are not interested in practing community. The information you provided to outsiders is the source of the enclosed personal attacts on me. I am rescinding the offer to meet.I will not participate in email name calling or personal assaults."

She doesn't say she is being threatened, but disingenuously calls the email an "assault" and implies that she knows "S. Siles" is not a regular Emory person when she refers to "outsiders." Her real complaint is that one of the Republicans authored an article about her in the Emory Wheel that she didn't like. I don't envy her the personal conflict inherent in her job, but she is a public figure and needs to accept that the school newspaper, if it's doing its job, may write uncomplimentary things about her, and that people may contact her with unfelicitous opinions about her conduct based on those writings.

Having said that, in my experience crap draws crap to it. Those who love Horowitz enough to fight for him are more than likely unpleasant people like him. I'm not saying that Rorie or any other person who has to deal with the Horowitz boosters should have to feel good about it. I can definitely empathize with the urge to avoid social trauma, but it isn't always avoidable by honest, mature adults.

The administator cancelling the meeting with the college republicans was a mendacious act. "Difficult" hardly. But for those of us who have had real jobs in the real world, refusing to do the job because it's "difficult" is ground for dismissal.

P.S. Regarding T.J Rodgers and alumni, lighten up dude, I just thought you would find it interesting. I never said that you called conservatives stupid, it just seems to be a common prejudice in academia.