Dear Mr. Mansour,
I have read your open letter. Your version of the facts differs markedly from mine. Learning is messy. In the final analysis, I think there are two important points to make:
Firstly, I worked with others to ensured that the lecture went on as planned. It was well-attended and included thoughtful, challenging, and respectful exchanges.
Secondly, I support the students’ right to publish their views in our student newspaper.
Both of these points reflect a core value: Vassar is committed to upholding free speech on campus.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth H. Bradley
President Bradley,
I am pleased to hear that Vassar is committed to upholding free speech on campus. In light of this commitment perhaps you can expand as to why Professor Jacobson was denied the request to live stream his lecture?
Dear Madam President.
I have two questions.
1. Shouldn’t that be “to ensure”?
2. The letter you are responding to is comprehensive and detailed. Your vague assertion of having a different recollection covers everything from the substantive to ” I thought it was cooler that night.” Doesn’t intellectual honesty require some details about what parts you disagree with?
Wow. Elizabeth Bradley had an opportunity to respond to the numerous, well thought-out points raised in Paul Mansour’s letter. Instead she skipped right over the bulk of them, choosing instead to take a curt, defensive posture. Not to worry. As MLK once said, the unarmed truth will have the final word.
Elizabeth Bradley
It saddens me greatly that you, a supposed well educated college administer would support the neo-facist ideals of a group like H2A. Like the facists and Nazis that preceded them these campus groups that organize flash mobs to riot and or protest any speech they find objectionable are nothing more than socialist / communist thugs who seek nothing less than the collapse of the American republic.
They loudly proclaim their rights of free speech in the American free society as justification to deny other Americans their Constitutional rights. Surreptitiously organized, funded and backed up by CAIR, LA Raza and various North American communist groups. The naiveté of these children is being exploited by enemies of the United States. I would say our country but, the sympathetic actions of you and other leftwing college administers and professors leaves me to believe you have forfeited the rights to call yourselves American.
Perhaps your careers ensconced in the ivory towers of “education” have left you as blind, foolish and naive as the students you seem so eager to allow to be exploited. Perhaps, like the NFL football players who refuse to stand while the American National Anthem is played you fail to see that your actions are destroying your job. Colleges like the NFL are seeing a marked decrease in enrollment. I’ve heard numerous college age Americans lament the death of college education. Many dropouts have expressed to me that the liberal bias and anti-American ideals forced on them by the professors and administrative staff were the prime reason they left college. Other college age people have said to me “I can’t see getting that far indebted simply to listen to communist indoctrination all day”. Maybe that’s your plan? To make receiving a college degree so unpalatable for mainstream American youth that only those students preindoctrinated at home can stomach 4 years of college “education”.
In closing I will remind you Elizabeth , the pendalum swings both ways. American families are tired of their tax dollars be spent to subsidize enclaves of Marxist communists. Like the NFL when we the owners get tired of throwing good money after bad then it will be time to make personnel changes and, their contracts nor your tenure will save you then.
Those that can, do
Those that cannot, teach
I prefer the more pointed version, certainly apropos here: Those who can, do. Those who cant, teach.
“ashamed of their own inability to engage in cogent argument and discussion, and unable to cope with the real world.”
Mansour pretty much nailed the admin. as well as the students. Any respectful college president would be ashamed of this empty response.
Any group of suckers willing to pay $70,000 a year to learn Marxist nonsense (which takes all of a hour), needs to be cossetted and coddled.
Of course those willing to do so are a lot closer to criminals than educators, as their unfortunate victims will discover should their trust funds ever run low.