Thursday, March 8, 2007
The folks from the MIT Hillel have written a letter in to The Jewish Advocate that gets the controversy over the invitation to the Neturei Karta Rabbi and the Holocaust denying Imam (see: The Subsidized Fifth Column -- Finkelstein at Harvard, MIT sponsors Holocaust Denier and The Subsidized Fifth Column -- MIT Student Group Responds) just about right:
We at MIT Hillel appreciate the Advocate’s coverage of the “Foreign Policy and Social Justice: A Jewish View, a Muslim View†event that transpired on Feb. 22. The MIT Jewish community’s response was well planned by Jewish student leaders from across the spectrum.
One aspect of Hillel’s concern, however, was not touched on in the article. The MIT Jewish community supports free speech. Nonetheless, we believe that a university is responsible for setting the terms of academic discourse so as to maintain intellectual standards.
MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) abandoned this responsibility by co-sponsoring with two student organizations a presentation by extremists and by declining to exercise prior judgment. The effect of the SHASS sponsorship was to lend legitimacy to what were, in fact, hateful rants. We have protested this behavior to the Dean of the School.
MIT Hillel is proud to be a leader on the MIT campus in the promotion of interfaith dialogue and the building of bridges between the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim student communities. The results of these relations were reflected when no religious organization accepted an offer to co-sponsor the Feb. 22 event.
Matthew Cons,
President MIT Hillel Student Board
Gene Fax,
President, MIT Hillel Board of
Directors
Miriam Rosenblum
Director, MIT Hillel
