Free Speech and Inclusion at Stanford: David Palumbo-Liu

Stanford University is back in the news this week, and for all the wrong reasons as usual. We begin with an article by Aaron Bandler running this week in the Jewish Journal (of Los Angeles). The article charges that Stanford, through its diversion and inclusion program (an indoctrination endeavor in itself) is singly out Jewish students as simply being in the category of white and privileged, which is contributing to even more anti-Semitism in addition to that brought about by the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel forces.

Also running this week in the Stanford Daily is yet another piece by Stanford professor David Palumbo-Liu, who seems to be a regular contributor to the Daily. Palumbo-Liu is a two-trick pony. When he is not crusading against Israel, he is trying to run the conservative Hoover Institution off-campus. Yet here he is in another op-ed attacking the Hoover Institution and the Stanford College Republicans while at the same time complaining about the lack of free speech on campus for liberals, a joke in itself since liberals rule the roost at Stanford as they do in universities across the country.

 Poor little Prof. Palumbo-Liu. One would think after reading this pathetic piece that conservatives were in charge in our universities when exactly the opposite is the case. Palumbo-Liu is worried about his freedom of speech even though he has a free platform at the SD for his regular attacks against the Hoover Institution, which he wants to shut down.

Too bad the learned professor is not as concerned for Stanford's Jewish students. Like so many other universities, Stanford has become a hostile environment for Jewish students largely thanks to groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, which Liu wholeheartedly supports. In reality, he is just another one of those dime-a-dozen anti-Israel propagandists who infest our universities like mosquitos infest swamps. Meanwhile, the rare speakers who come to defend Israel or America on a university campus can expect to have their speeches disrupted by the friends of Professor Palumbo-Liu.

Palumbo-Liu, indeed, has the right of free speech, which he regularly employs at Stanford and elsewhere. Not only does he not respect that same right for others, but he turns truth on its head when he tries to make the case that it is liberals like himself who are being victimized and having their First Amendment rights threatened in academia. 

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