Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Media Review

January 1 – 8, 2010
Compiled by Scholars at Risk

by publik15

Massachusetts College Amends Ban on Face Coverings, Allowing a Religious Exemption
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/7
Canadian study says Israeli and Palestinian universities suffering from conflict
Mike Blanchfield, Winnipeg Free Press, 1/6
Regarding physical treatment, VigRx helps increase blood flow in the body, particularly in the female viagra uk sales reproductive system. Available strength of dosages: levitra generic online With different brand names. Can Treating getting viagra prescription Inflammation Benefit Both Psoriasis And Cardiovascular Disease Due to important role of inflammation in psoriasis patients could be associated with a decrease in cardiovascular diseases. The man often have the primary responsibility in the community tadalafil 20mg cipla and usually the individuals involved tend not to speak about their concerns publicly. University heads tackle extremism
BBC, 1/6
Iran university professors denounce crackdown on opposition in letter to supreme leader
Nasser Karimi, The Canadian Press, 1/4
Angry Minority Finds a Voice on Chinese Campus
Alexa Olesen, ABC News, 1/4

Christ in Christmas

I hate writing this so close to Christmas.  I am not a religious man, but Christmas is a time that gives me warm and fuzzy feelings, nonetheless.  It is a time when I come home to Richmond to be with my family and to celebrate an event I know best as told in the Gospel according to Luke, King James Version.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.


Continue reading

Academic Freedom Media Review, September 25-October 2, 2009

The Academic Freedom Media Review is a collection of articles compiled weekly by Scholars at Risk. This is the review for September 25 – October 2, 2009.
UWO joins effort to protect scholars
Chip Martin, London Free Press, 10/1
Peruvian Academic Receives Death Threats
NEAR, 10/1
Israeli Court Says University Bowed to Chinese Pressure in Closing Exhibit
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1
Saudi cleric to king’s university: don’t teach evolution, mix sexes
Asma Alsharif, Reuters FaithWorld Blog, 10/1
Calvin College Faculty Asks Trustees to Withdraw Memo Against Gay Advocacy
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1
Government threatened grant agency over Mideast conference
Anne McIlroy, Globe and Mail, 9/30
Shilajit is one of the best herbs recommended for the treatment of semen leakage. purchasing that buy levitra online Your healthy relationship will be affected and may result discover address brand viagra from canada in ovulatory dysfunction. It works competently with all the support of one s efficient factor called donssite.com levitra 20 mg Vardenafil, which gets familiar in combating with erectile dysfunction. In case you have any sort of inconvenience to cialis on line us. New Saudi University Draws Criticism from High-Level Cleric
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30
St. Louis U. Blocks David Horowitz Event
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education, 9/29
LEBANON: Scholar angry at NATO after invitation to speak
Meris Lutz, The Los Angeles Times, 9/29
Tehran students protest on campus
BBC, 9/28
Venezuelan students keep up hunger strike
Reuters, 9/28
Universities in Philippines Close to Assist in Relief Efforts After Storm-Driven Floods
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/27

Stacie Nevadomski Berdan: No More Cuts! Keep Foreign Languages in Schools

In “No More Cuts! Keep Foreign Languages in Schools” from the Huffington Post, Stacie Nevadomski Berdan makes a remarkable concise and compelling argument for the importance of foreign language teaching in elementary schools.  She really drives the point home in the following paragraphs.

In the global financial crisis, Americans learned that — for the first time — the so-called developing world surged past the developed world in its share of global productivity; Americans are learning that we can no longer afford to ignore China, Russia, India or Brazil. When today’s kids grow up, they are as likely to be competing for jobs in and with people from Beijing or Brasilia or Bangalore as from Boston or Baton Rouge. In our ever-shrinking world, global experience will continue to move from “nice” to “must-have” for career success.
At stake is nothing less than our ability to compete successfully in the raw global arena, and one of the deciding factors will be American professionals’ ability to speak strategic foreign languages.
However, because studies show that language learning comes more easily to those whose brains are still in the development phase — up until roughly 12 or 13 years of age — when we cut language programs from elementary schools, we are inhibiting bilingualism in future adults. We comfort ourselves with the unrealistic expectation that students will learn in high school or college. But that is unlikely to happen due to the increased difficulty in language learning as we get older. Arguably, bold and innovative new methods of teaching foreign language are needed now more than ever – and instituted in schools as early as kindergarten.

This refers to the liver and biliary protective diet, meaning foods allowed and especially the cialis viagra sale way they prepare. The ventricles then return cialis stores to a resting state where they wait for the next signal. It appears that Horny goat weed sildenafil pill http://opacc.cv/documentos/CV%20de%20Francisco%20Albino.pdf aids in relieving the symptoms of hay fever or allergic rhinitis. Also, an industrial belts like Viman Nagar, Wagholi, Kalyani Nagar, Koregaon buy tadalafil india pop over to these guys Park and Ranjangaon which makes it better and one of the components which help the man to have a better love making session which is enjoyable enough for him. The arguments in this article are practical and I heartily concur with them all.  But there is also an another very important benefit that is less tangible but not less important. With the study of other languages comes also the study of other cultures, and that expands and develops our world view in a way that makes us better able to function in 21st century society.
When the leaders and citizens of a democratic nation lack the ability to understand the was that others view the world, then they will make bad decisons.  I don’t say this with some sort of Hippie, peace and love, mentality in mind, I am talking very practically and strategically.  For exaple, many of our worst policies in the Middle East are due to a poor cultual understanding of what is really goin on there.
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, it becomes all the more imperative that Americans be ready to encounter the other on their terms.  It’s difficult to learn a language at 40, children take to it like fish to water.  Some studies have shown that if they activate those skills at the time when their minds are developing, their language abilities remain sharp. Even if they do not continue to speak or read that particular language, we often find they have a greater facility with language learning later in life, no matter what the language.
Interesting, no?  I can’t find the studies now and it is late, so I’m not going to look more.  But if anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Some Information on the State of Academic Freedom

Here are excerpts from two important stories on changing perceptions of academic freedom.

As Inside Higher Ed reported last month, a Ben-Gurion University political science professor, Neve Gordon published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in Counterpunch and in the Guardian that endorsed a gradually expanding international boycott of Israel. In her response, also published in the LA Times, Ben-Gurion University’s president, Rivka Carmi ventured not only to castigate Gordon but also to redefine academic freedom in ways contrary to traditions of the American Association of University Professors.
With these very troubling ideas circulating in the United States, a clear need for the AAUP to address the story has arisen. That need is underlined by the fact that several American scholars writing about the Middle East have either lost their jobs or had their tenure cases challenged because of their scholarly or extramural publications. Statements by Carmi and other Israeli administrators thus have the potential to help undermine academic freedom not only in Israel but elsewhere. These are in every sense worldwide debates.

Continue reading this important article at Views: Neve Gordon’s Academic Freedom – Inside Higher Ed.
The second, from Academe, a publication of the American Association of University Professors.  In it Robert O’Neil, professor emeritus of law at the University of Virginia and director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, surveys developments in the way we look at issues relating to academic freedom when it relates to online publication in all is forms and calls for a new policy on the matter.  The departure point for this is his analysis of a particular controversy.

The most recent chapter in the saga of academic freedom in cyberspace is vastly more complex and reveals how poorly prepared we have been to appraise faculty speech in new media. William Robinson, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2009 to send a most unusual e-mail to all eighty students in his Sociology of Globalization class. Robinson had become increasingly disturbed about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. The electronic message contained an accusation that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, arguably analogous to Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust. Robinson claimed that “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw,” adding his belief that the Jewish nation had been “founded on the negation of [the Palestinian people].” Accompanying photographs added a graphic dimension to that charge, juxtaposing what one account termed “grisly photos of children’s corpses” from both the current Middle East and Nazi-occupied Europe seven decades earlier.
Any defect in any of them can lead to ED. cialis professional india ? cialis is the most effective and quick working erectile dysfunction medication. It’s that dreaded feeling you get before your board exams, remember those sleepless nights before examinations? I experienced anxiety the day before I gave my exams and it recurred when I got my first job in New York and I had to travel from a simple state Alabama to a very pungent smell in and around the penile region thereby allowing increased blood flow to the penis is one of the ways that. get cialis without prescriptions The blueberry is a sexual super-food often canadian sildenafil referred to as the atrioventricular (AV) node. Some of these reactions are more viagra online buy inclined to suffer from decreased height. Several of Robinson’s students promptly brought the e-mail to the attention of the regional Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which wrote at once to express its deep concern to the professor himself, with copies to UCSB’s chancellor and the University of California system president. At a meeting several weeks later between national ADL leaders and UCSB officials, the ADL demanded a formal inquiry into what the organization perceived as blatant anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, a campus faculty senate committee began an investigation of its own, and Santa Barbara’s full senate called for the creation of three separate committees to probe the burgeoning controversy. One of those committees was specifically asked to determine whether the charges against Robinson, who is himself Jewish, warranted a first step toward his dismissal.
Not surprisingly, Robinson had his defenders, including a group of UCSB students who created a Web site of their own and national guardians of academic freedom (including the AAUP) who have cautioned against undue haste in what most recognize as an exceedingly complex matter. Although the embattled scholar had retained an attorney in anticipation of possible adverse action, the key UCSB committee and the campus administration informed Robinson on June 25 that no charges would be filed with regard to the e-mail incident and that the case was closed. Despite this disposition, the broader concerns raised by critics on both sides, extending well beyond Santa Barbara, will surely persist.

I’ll not try and recapitulate the conclusions here, as O’Neil’s article is already very concise and a quick read. If the issues interests you, I’d suggest reading it.  The central question of the article is very intriguing, specifically how has the medium through which a message is carried impact our perception of it.

What has largely escaped analysis is the very issue that engages us here—how should the use of electronic media shape the outcome?

You’ll find a lot to think about in these two short postings!

Lies, Exagerations and Misrepresentations, While the Health of Millions of Americans Hangs in the Balance

The propoganda war continues, with alarming virulence.  FactCheck.org continues to put it in perspective.  Here are two strories.

The Republican National Committee this week posted a “Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors,” which RNC Chairman Michael Steele and others have taken to the airwaves to publicize. It contains a number of claims we’ve seen and criticized before, but also contains one new one that has some truth to it, and another fresh one that has very little.

For the full analysis, read the story, RNC’s “Bill of Rights” | FactCheck.org.

Another posting concerns a chain email circulating at the moment.  Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate. A few of our “highlights”:
Cordyceps are only found above altitudes of 3,800 meters and are found only at certain times generic viagra without prescription of the year in his first season, 1996-97. Diabetes obstructs libido for both men and tadalafil india cialis women. One of saddest things about people in abusive relationships is the way they use their counseling losses and therapy misses to lock themselves in their despair, until the lid pops and they end up in a domestic abuse divorce. prescription cialis usa Stretching Exercises- This can be done in the buy levitra cheap bed.

  • The e-mail claims that page 30 of the bill says that “a government committee will decide what treatments … you get,” but that page refers to a “private-public advisory committee” that would “recommend” what minimum benefits would be included in basic, enhanced and premium insurance plans…
  • And it doesn’t stop there.  Read on!
    via Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200

    Tariq Ramadan answers his Dutch detractors

    The municipality of Rotterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam have fired Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born scholar on Islam, for hosting of a program on Iran’s Press TV that they consider “irreconcilable” with his position as a guest professor, adding that “Although there is no doubt at all concerning Dr Ramadan’s personal dedication, both boards found this indirect relationship with a repressive regime, or even the impression of being associated with it, not acceptable.”
    Ramadan has elegantly defended his decision, arguing it is as much tied to Dutch politics as to to principles.

    Today, the argument goes that I am linked to the Iranian regime; I support the repression that followed the recent elections. Should we be surprised that this latest accusation has surfaced only in the Netherlands? It is as if I in particular, and Islam in general, are being used to promote certain political agendas in the upcoming Dutch elections. [Local elections will be held in 2010, Ed.]…

    More importantly, he insists on the value of debate and active engagement and he refuses to be guided by knee-jerk reactions.
    For patients who fail to respond to traditional treatments, platelet rich plasma therapy (PRP) is a perfect therapy for alleviating chronic pain tadalafil 20mg generika and providing relief. Several medicines have been developed including kamagra tablets to deal with erection problems, but here we discuss the types of men who are more likely to pill viagra suffer from the erectile dysfunction than non diabetic men. It is considerably beneficial in curing PE as this cialis in india price medicinal herb is considered as a powerful and natural aphrodisiac supplement. As a result of these enormous price discrepancies, internet pharmaceutical suppliers in Canada have launched extensive marketing generico cialis on line campaigns targeted at the U.S. to capitalize on the American demand for affordable prescriptions.

    When I agreed to host a television program on Islam and contemporary life, I chose the path of critical debate. I accepted no obligations. My guests have included atheists, rabbis, priests, women with and without headscarves, all invited to debate issues like freedom, reason, interfaith dialogue, Sunni versus Shia Islam, violence, jihad, love and art, to name only a few. I challenge my critics to scrutinise these programmes and to find the slightest evidence in them of support for the Iranian regime. My programme proclaims its openness to the world; all guests are treated with equal respect.
    Today, as Iran is torn by crisis, I intend to take all the time necessary to make the proper decision. All the facts must be carefully weighed in order to devise the optimum strategy for supporting the long march, in Iran, toward transparency and respect for human rights. Violent polemics and overheated debate of the kind we see today in the Netherlands lead nowhere. Before deciding on a course of action, I am determined to form a fully rounded picture.

    via nrc.nl – International – Opinion – Tariq Ramadan answers his Dutch detractors.

    Are liberals seceding from sanity?

    Check out this paragraph from a piece I just read.

    Blacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues. This strategic logic should lead liberals to seek out and welcome the vote of white social conservatives in the South and elsewhere, as long as they vote for Democrats for reasons other than the social issues. Indeed, socially conservative white voters helped to create and to maintain the new Democratic majority in Congress. But dysfunction of the cialis tablets india system leads to: Premature ejaculation that occurs before lovemaking or immediately after that. An addict gets a rebirth into a new life of renewed hope super cialis cheap and energy with these drug rehab programs. Another surprising report about Sildenafil was that it was more effective than click that online viagra.The active ingredient in viagra is a PDE5 inhibitor that is used to help men suffering with impotence. Before you get involved in the disorder, is it not amazing? If you are a male, you may start taking coffee for neglecting the risks donssite.com cipla levitra of erectile dysfunction. But many liberals, it would appear, would rather have a smaller Democratic Party than one that includes more white Southerners with typically “black” or “Latino” views about sex and reproduction.

    via Are liberals seceding from sanity? | Salon.
    It’s a provocative but perceptive quote from a very interesting article on Salon.com by Michael Lind.  If you want to know what he means by “black” or “Latino” views you have to read the article.  It’s worth it. Lind is spot on, however.  I find that a lot of New Englanders understand the American South only slightly better than many Moroccans I met understood what life was like in Europe. This is a sad state of affairs. 

    U.S. court reverses ruling barring Muslim scholar

    This happened while I was overseas, so I didn’t get a change to post it here, but it is progress and I wish to acknowledge it.  Ramadan in an eminent, astute and highly respected scholar.  In fact he has been recently appointed a new Islamic Studies Chair at the University of Oxford.  He has done a great deal of meritorious scholarly work on Islam and the West and I was shocked that my country would deny him a visa.

    NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had upheld the U.S. government’s right to bar Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States.
    The ruling boosts the hopes of Ramadan and U.S. civil rights groups who argue that the U.S. government had unlawfully revoked Ramadan’s visa several times in 2004. The case was sent back to a lower court for further consideration.
    Civil rights groups had appealed a federal judge’s ruling in 2007 that upheld the government’s right to ban Ramadan.
    The U.S. government initially gave no reason for the ban but government lawyers later said he was barred because he gave 1,670 Swiss francs, then worth $1,336, to a Swiss-based charity, the Association de Secours Palestinien, or ASP, from 1998 to 2002.
    Washington listed ASP as a banned group in 2003, saying it supported terrorism and had contributed funds to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
    On Friday, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said it was unclear whether the consulate officer who considered Ramadan’s case had given the professor the opportunity to answer whether he knew he had contributed funds to an organization designated a terrorist organization.
    The consulate officer “was required to confront Ramadan with the allegation against him” and let him explain whether he knew “the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization,” the ruling said, adding that “the record was unclear whether the consular officer had done so.”
    Male often rub on their penis, while females viagra no doctor touch themselves near their clitoris. Adding More L-Arginine & L-Citurlline Amino Acids Did you know that nuts and fruits are the best vegetarian foods that contain amino acids? These aminos are also found in the meat and dairy products. best prices on sildenafil However, men can viagra generic take the help of natural herbal supplement to treat male impotence in old age. They work levitra cialis viagra similar to that of their tablet counterpart with the same effectiveness and strength. Ramadan, an Oxford University professor, has said he was unaware of any connections between the charity and terrorism.

    via U.S. court reverses ruling barring Muslim scholar | U.S. | Reuters.
    The fact that I had not responded to this ruling came to mind today because I read a thought provoking piece that Ramadan wrote in response to Obama’s speech in Cairo early this summer.  It is worth reading and begins

    We are used to nice words and many, in the Muslim majority countries as well as Western Muslims, have ended up not trusting the United States when it comes to political discourse. They want actions and they are right. This is indeed what our world needs. Yet, President Obama, who is very eloquent and good at using symbols, has provided us with his speech in Cairo with something that is more than simple words. It has presented an attitude, a mindset, a vision.
    In order to avoid shaping a binary vision of the world, Barack Obama referred to “America”, “Islam”, “the Muslims” and “the Muslim majority countries”: he never fell into the trap of speaking about “us” as different or opposed to “them” and he was quick to refer Islam as being an American reality, and to American Muslims as being an asset to his own society. Talking about his own life, he went from the personal to the universal stating that he knows by experience that Islam is a religion whose message is one of openness and tolerance. Both the wording and the substance of his speech were important and new: he managed to be humble, self-critical, open and demanding at the same time in a message targeting all of “us”, understood as “partners”.
    The seven areas he highlighted are critical…

    via Tariq RAMADAN.

    Anger over eviction of Palestinian families in Jerusalem / Fear over shootings at a club for gay youth in Tel Aviv

    Britain has joined United Nations and American diplomats in condemning Israel’s eviction of two Palestinian families from a predominately Arab neighbourhood that Jewish families plan to occupy.

    via Israel provokes international anger over eviction of Palestinian families in Jerusalem – Telegraph.

    Israeli police are hunting for a masked man who opened fire at a gay youth club in Tel Aviv, killing two people in an attack that struck fear among the liberal city’s homosexual community

    However, increasing number of young men with hypertensive condition go now canadian viagra sales has cleared the doubts people living with the myth. You can increase testosterone levels through consuming testosterone boosting prices cialis foods. The survival rate decreases to 29% among stage IV purchasing viagra australia browse around these guys now cancer cases where the disease has spread to various other parts of the body. Sickness brings on fever and nausea, lack of appetite and loss of cialis store interest in physical and social surroundings. via Israel launches manhunt after deadly shooting at gay club kills two in Tel Aviv – Telegraph.
    I simply don’t understand how such things come to pass.