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Duke University Plays Host to Anti-Semites and Terror Advocates

(Wall Street Journal) Eric Adler and Jack Langer - In October, Duke University hosted the annual conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, dedicated to delegitimizing the State of Israel. One keynote speech was delivered by Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Yale professor of genetics, who presented a short history of what he portrayed as the virulent Zionist "disease." There was also a lecture by the PLO legal adviser Diana Buttu, whose theme was that Palestinians have suffered a fate worse than blacks under apartheid in South Africa, and that Israel is today "the greatest abuser of human rights" in the world. Nasser Abufarha defended the terrorist activities of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in combating Zionist "aggression." In the aftermath of the conference, Duke's Jewish organizations - and Jews in general - became the object of furious attack in columns and electronic discussion boards of the student-run Chronicle. Whether or not a university has a duty to license the unfettered expression on its campus of every venomous notion under the sun, the real issue at Duke was always the refusal of the licensing authorities to call such notions by their proper names - in this case, bald anti-Semitism and incitement to the murder of innocents. That refusal on the part of the university and its president is what led to the postconference outbreak of anti-Jewish hatred. Once the guardians of the citadel granted permission to open the gates, is it any surprise that the marauding hordes came storming through?
2005-01-07 00:00:00
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