Stories from 2004-03-31

"Cries of 'bias' aren't limited to public universities. The same week that Crystall's e-mail hit the press, conservative students at Duke published an ad in their campus newspaper taking university leaders to task for the lack of 'intellectual diversity' on campus. As evidence, students cited the percentages of registered Democrats and Republicans among deans and on the faculty in eight departments to show how GOP members are almost nonexistent." [more]

"'I don’t think this is going to be resolved with the current regime,' Gilinsky said. 'What we need to do is wait them out and hem them in as best we can and use other ways to soften them up and have the juices of capitalism maybe corrode their spirit,' he added." [more]

"To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up." [more]

"I can't advocate a news blackout on these issues; the term 'marketplace of ideas' is engraved on each cell in my body. But I'd like the marketplace to be a real one: complex, thoughtful, diverse. And right now, the coverage is being increasingly circumscribed by the agenda of conservative groups bent on shutting conversation down, quelling dissent and the free exchange of ideas--while they simultaneously and hypocritically claim that their moves are based on the twin pillars of free speech and fairness. It's a clever argument the local media seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker." [more]

"After many American threats to arrest Muqtada in the past, the American occupying forces accused al-Hawza of fomenting violence against them and closed its offices for 60 days, padlocking and chaining the doors, handing the editor a letter signed by US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer, explaining that the newspaper had violated a ban on fomenting violence." [more]

"The Uzbek government has been systematically persecuting Muslims for more than five years, jailing roughly 7,000 believers for engaging in non-state-sanctioned forms of religious expression. Some reports suggest the current Uzbek arrest spree is merely an extension of the ongoing crackdown on Islam, with Muslims being indiscriminately arrested. According to one British Broadcasting Corp. report March 31, one woman asserted that four of her sons were taken into custody because they share the same name as an militant who was captured March 30." [more]