Protests Planned to Oppose Appearance by Ann Coulter at USC tonight
National Project in Defense of Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia
October 24, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Reggie Dylan: (626) 319-1730
Email: criticalxthinking@yahoo.com
Website: www.defendcriticalthinking.org
Protests Planned to Oppose Appearance by Ann Coulter at USC tonight
Broad Opposition is mountng by students, scholars and organizations around the Los Angeles area to Ann Coulter’s talk at USC tonight. She is speaking as part of David Horowitz's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW). Billed as the "largest conservative student protest ever," IFAW has faced strong opposition since it was announced.
The National Project to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia will join The Council on American-Islamic Relations Greater Los Angeles Area, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, along with USC student groups at their silent vigil at 5:15 followed by a speakout at 6:30. These will be held outside Annenberg Auditorium at USC, where Coulter is speaking.
Those opposing the Coulter appearance believe she is playing a deliberate role in coarsening the discourse about the most important questions confronting the country, and giving legitimacy to the crude racist and chauvinist sentiments and forces IFAW seeks to mobilize. They see her appearance and IFAW as directly aimed at creating public opinion for war with Iran.
Ann Coulter has said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, that the Emancipation Proclamation should be repealed, that in her ideal society everyone would be christian and that Jews need to be "perfected." For this David Horowitz describes her as "a National Treasure."
Coulter has also said of Islamic regimes that “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet- bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”
Coulter was originally scheduled to speak at UC Irvine as well. Though her speech was recently canceled, a petition initiated by UCI faculty condemning IFAW as promoting “ignorance and chauvinism” has received more that 1300 signatures. At Tulane, students circulated a petition in opposition to Ann Coulter's talk there, saying that it is "an event encouraging violence and hate towards members of our community."
On Tuesday at UCLA, Professors Peter McLaren and Juan Gomez Quinones, and Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power, and Empire spoke a forum at UCLA Tuesday entitled "Why we need to expose and oppose David Horowitz and Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week."
Students at UCLA are organizing opposition to a speech, also tonight, by Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian convert to Christian fundamentalism who has said, “Islam is cruel, anti-women, anti-religious freedom and anti-personal freedom in general."
The National Project to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia (www.defendcriticalthinking.org) has been reporting on student and faculty plans opposing IFAW on campuses across the country.
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For more information and to arrange interviews about today’s events in opposition to the appearance of Ann Coulter at USC, and Nonie Darwish at UCLA, contact:
Reggie Dylan: (626) 319-1730, criticalxthinking@yahoo.com
Dylan is the spokesperson for The National Project to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking in Academia
Other contacts to be interviewed about today’s events are:
Noam Chomsky: (617) 253-7819, chomsky@mit.edu
Noam Chomsky is one of America's most prominent political dissidents. A renowned professor of linguistics at MIT, he has authored over 30 political books dissecting such issues as U.S. interventionism in the developing world, the political economy of human rights and the propaganda role of corporate media. Chomsky is not available for television interviews at this time.
Carol Downer: (323) 547-4119
One of the Founders of the Feminist Women’s Health Centers in 1971. Since that time she has been active in the self-help movement, and is currently on the board of the Feminist Women’s Health Center of Northern California.
Larry Everest: (510) 684.2104, larryeverest@hotmail.com
Larry Everest's most recent work is Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda (Common Courage Press, 2003).
Peter McLaren: reach through (626) 319-1730, mclaren@gseis.ucla.edu
McLaren is internationally recognized as one of the leading architects of critical pedagogy worldwide. He has developed a reputation for his uncompromising political analysis influenced by a Marxist humanist philosophy and a unique literary style of expression. McLaren is currently Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, United States. He is singled out for attack at Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com
Sunsara Taylor: (626) 319-1730, sunsarasworld@yahoo.com
Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can’t Wait—Drive Out the Bush Regime. She has appeared on/in The New York Times, The O'Reilly Factor, CNN's Showbiz Tonight, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, Fox & Friends, the Alan Colmes Radio Show, and her writing has appeared in Revolution (revcom.us), TruthDig.com, TruthOut.org, CounterPunch.org, OnlineJournal.com, OpEdNews.com, SmirkingChimp.com, and numerous blogs.
John K. Wilson: (773) 227-8136, (773) 606-7830 (cell), collegefreedom@yahoo.com
Founder, Institute for College Freedom, www.collegefreedom.org, collegefreedom.blogspot.com: Author, "Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies" (Paradigm Publishers, December 2007): Author, "Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest" (Paradigm Publishers, October 2007), www.obamapolitics.com