Report from DePaul
DePaul has been very much at the center of the attacks on critical thinking and dissent, with the recent forced resignation of Professor Norman Finkelstein and the accompanying tenure denial of Dr. Mehrene Larudee) around 100 people (mainly students) attended a teach-in in response to IFAW. An ad-hoc Committee to Resist Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week fought very hard for this forum to happen, and things came together very quickly, as there was a very palpable need for those responding to IFAW (and those still watching from the sidelines) to get more deeply into both what IFAW is really all about (exposing the real agenda and McCarthyite apparatus behind the calls for “dialogue”) as well as having the kind of debate and wrangling around the themes IFAW raises- precisely the discourse Horowitz really wants to shut down and replace. Speakers included John K. Wilson, author of Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, Maoist political economist and contributor to Revolution, Raymond Lotta, and DePaul Professors of Political Science, Dr. Khalil Marrar and Dr. Scott Hibbard.
The panelists came from various perspectives but the evening was filled with a spirit of rigorously getting to the truth and figuring out what is really in the interests of the people of the world. Students from DePaul, Loyola and Columbia College were closely taking pages of notes as a critical debate began to take off: about the “War on Terror” and the role of the United States in the world (both what’s going on today in Iraq and Afghanistan and a potential attack on Iran, as well as the US history in the region both recent and longer-term and especially in relation to the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism) and how to understand IFAW and the attacks on academic freedom and what David Horowitz is up to. There was a palpable sense, in the questions to the panel as well as in the discussion afterwards as people stuck around and continued to debate, that all of this intellectual ferment had very real-world and historic implications- people were openly trying to figure out what kind of future is in store for the planet – and what’s desirable, possible and necessary. And importantly, what are the implications of all of this for how we act today?