Bill Maher Next in Long Line of Commencement Speaker Protests
Do students these days not have anything better to protest?
Heyun Jeong at The Daily Californian has the story:
Students spring into opposition after Bill Maher announced as keynote speaker
In response to an announcement last week that comedian Bill Maher would speak at UC Berkeley’s fall commencement, an online petition started circulating Thursday that demanded that the campus rescind its invitation.
The Change.org petition was authored by ASUC Senator Marium Navid, who is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition, or MEMSA, and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member. The petition, which urges students to boycott the decision and asks the campus to stop him from speaking, has already gathered more than 1,400 signatures as of Sunday.
Maher, a stand-up comedian and host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, is best known for his often-polarizing political commentary. Recently, Maher faced some backlash after controversial remarks regarding Islam during a segment on his Oct. 6 show.
“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate,” Navid said. “The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.”
Last spring, 50 students and professors at Haverford College protested the invitation of former UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau to speak at their commencement because of his handling of the Occupy Cal protests in 2011. In response, Birgeneau declined the invitation.
Students spring into opposition after Bill Maher announced as keynote speaker (The Daily Californian)
Comments
Where were they when Maher was bashing Christians all these years? More importantly, the MSA should be asked if they have ever invited anti-Semitic speakers like Oakland imam Amir Abdel Malik Ali to speak at UCB (Yes). He regularly pulls names out of his hat and calls them, “Zionist Jews” spitting the words out. Ali has spoken many times at UC Irvine (where I teach part-time) on behalf of the MSU.
This is pure hypocrisy.
“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate,” Navid said. “The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.”
And who decides that, Marium Navid?
Where were all the objections to Bill Maher when he was bashing Christians as he has done for years?
In fact, where were all the objections in the past years of anti-Israeli events on UC campuses in which Jews have been insulted by speakers? Has the UCB Muslim Student Association ever invited Amir Abdel Malik Ali to speak on campus? (Yes) The MSU at UC Irvine, where I teach, has invited him many times. He regularly takes names out of a hat and calls them “Zionist Jews”, a term he spits out with contempt.
Bill Maher is a jerk in my view, but he pales in comparison to some of the speakers who regularly appear on UC campuses and bash Jews.