One of our jobs as faculty members is to help our students learn critical thinking skills. Judging from the Oct. 24 editorial from Leila Forouhi, we have a very long way to go.
First, the “Woe is me, I am Muslim” routine is wearing very thin. Muslims in this country are treated orders of magnitude better than non-Muslims in Muslim countries, and after Sept. 11, we have bent over backward to be both tolerant and accepting of the Islamic religion. In fact, the FBI database that Forouhi alludes to in her complaint about hate crimes shows that people of the Jewish faith are victims of hate crimes at a much greater rate than Muslims. Furthermore, her claim that the police “specifically targeted and brutalized” Muslims at a Colin Powell speech is nonsense, and comes with not a shred of proof. Even if her arrest statements are true, it proves nothing about some nationwide campaign against Muslims.
These errors in analysis, however, pale in comparison to her biggest blunder, that of claiming that the 11 UC Irvine students were denied their free speech rights because they were not allowed to continually interrupt the speech of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Whatever real or imagined grievances these students had against the ambassador or the state of Israel, protesting these grievances has limitations. The First Amendment does not protect the exercise of speech that in its very nature is meant to deprive someone else of that same right. The First Amendment applies to everyone, not just those people that Muslim students think are worthy of that right.
Given that Forouhi claims that even kicking them out of the auditorium was a violation of their First Amendment rights, it is hard to imagine having an unbiased discussion of this issue. Part of the growing process developed in college is the ability to see that there are other points of view, and sometimes those points of view are superior in logic and reason. Hopefully Forouhi, and those she might represent, will put their bigotry aside and evaluate whether someone that they disagree with might actually also have the right to be heard.
Scott W. Peterson
Math Instructor
