CAMPUS RADICALS

“Professors strangely absent when militants stifle debate” –

Gil Troy, Star Mar.5th.

If there is something worse than the “radical right”, it must be the “radical left”. Students, being young and idealistic, tend to raise hell on campuses, and within limits, that’s probably a good thing. However, there is a tendency for students at some universities –especially in the humanities –to become more than protesters; to impose their own extremist views on others, and even intimidate teachers – though in some cases, the teachers themselves set the tone.

As to the students of York University et al, they should be censured for their stupidity. Not that it would do much good. I was a student at York in the early seventies, and remember being chastised by a teaching assistant in Humanities 101 for daring to refer to a Time Magazine article in one of my essays. Time, she said, was a “capitalist rag”! A professor of Political Economy was the leader of the “Waffle Group” that operated on the left fringes of the NDP.

It seems that now York University has succumbed to a group of Palestinian-supporting/Israeli-hating radicals who are using the Middle-East conflict to justify their own bigoted, anti-Semitic agenda. One can hardly blame individual professors for avoiding confrontation. There is little profit in making oneself a target of the righteous vigilantes roaming the campus.The whole university faculty and governors should take responsibility here; ensuring that free speech is truly free and not a tool to with which to beat your adversary.

Kudos to Professor Troy for taking a stand.