There are only two reasonable approaches to what departments should be entitled to do: either they should sponsor and endorse events on all sides of controversial issues, or they should get out of the business of sponsoring and endorsing any sides of such issues. The approach taken by the political science department at Brooklyn College is absolutely unacceptable: namely, to endorse and sponsor only one side of a controversial issue, while refusing to co-sponsor and endorse the other side of the issue.
The president of Brooklyn College is wrong when she says that departments should have the right to selectively sponsor and endorse only one side of a controversy. That is a long step on the road to turning academic departments into biased, partisan and one-sided propaganda centers, reminiscent of “political science” departments in the former Soviet Union that “encouraged” their students to follow the official party line.
Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.