It’s difficult to imagine a school doing anything like this in defense of Christianity or any other religion for that matter.

The Lawfare Project reports.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Australian University Censors Speech Offensive to Islam, Threatens Students

June 3, 2013 – NEW YORK – Australian National University (ANU) administrators have given student board members and authors of the school’s newspaper Woroni an ultimatum: retract a recently published infographic satirizing Islam or face disciplinary proceedings that could include expulsion. Not surprisingly, the students responded to the school’s threat by removing the image from the Internet, having already published an apology to “any readers who felt victimised, while stressing that the piece was intended to be satirical.”

The infographic was the fifth in a student-produced series that satirized aspects of different religions, preceded by installments on Catholicism, Scientology, Mormonism, and Judaism. Only the piece on Islam drew university censorship, following a complaint by the International Students Department. According to ANU vice-chancellor Ian Young, the Chancelry (administration) “felt [the piece] actually breached the rules of the university in terms of student conduct and . . . breached the rules of at least the Australian Press Council principles to which Woroni abides.” Young denied that the censorship was an attack on freedom of speech and asserted that previous cartoons on other major religions were permissible because they did not attract formal complaints.

The implications of this are troubling: the Chancelry has effectively endorsed a policy of selectively restricting speech deemed offensive to Islam, and Islam alone.

The school’s severe and punitive interference is unprecedented. Woroni editor Gus McCubbing opined, “The problem I had here was never before had the Chancelry taken such an active role in disciplining us and saying what we can and can’t publish.” The Chancelry’s actions included twice summoning the student paper’s board members to discuss the issue, individually threatening the board members and authors with disciplinary action, and informing them that Woroni‘s funding allocation could be compromised if the parody of Islam remained online.