![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/academias-ivory-tower-300x200.jpg\")
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Amendment I
\nCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe First Amendment to the Constitution, the backbone of law in this country. Most of us here raised our right hands and swore allegiance, once if not several times. Seems of late our rights defined in that document are are getting thin, if not plain trampled upon. Dem Governors and Mayors, even down to unelected county and town “officials” have shamelessly taken our rights away under the guise of safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.\u201d
\n-Benjamin Franklin<\/p><\/blockquote>\nNowhere has this been more apparent than in the Ivory Towers of Academia, and it’s been that way for a long time. A male student accused of impropriety against a female is instantly expelled without recourse, Conservative speech is routinely crushed, anyone straying from the narrative, banned. So this story isn’t really shocking at all.<\/p>\n
Poetrooper sends.<\/p>\n
Arizona: Muslim Students Threaten to Kill Prof for Suggesting Islam Is Violent<\/h3>\n
By: ROBERT SPENCER<\/strong><\/p>\n
This will teach those Islamophobes that Islam is a religion of peace: a professor is facing death threats for suggesting otherwise. Nicholas Damask, Ph.D., has taught political science at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona for 24 years. But now he is facing a barrage of threats, and his family, including his 9-year-old grandson and 85-year-old parents, is in hiding, while College officials are demanding that he apologize \u2013 all for the crime of speaking the truth about the motivating ideology behind the threat of Islamic jihad worldwide.<\/p>\n
Damask, who has an MA in International Relations from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati, says he is \u201cto my knowledge, the only tenured political science faculty currently teaching in Arizona to write a doctoral dissertation on terrorism.\u201d He has taught Scottsdale Community College\u2019s World Politics for each of the 24 years he has worked at the school.<\/p>\n
Professor Damask\u2019s troubles began during the current Spring semester, when a student took exception to three quiz questions. The questions were:<\/p>\n
Who do terrorists strive to emulate? A. Mohammed
\nWhere is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law? A. The Medina verses [i.e., the portion of the Qur\u2019an traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad\u2019s prophetic career]
\nTerrorism is _______ in Islam. A. justified within the context of jihad.<\/em><\/p>\nDamask explained: \u201cAll quiz questions on each of my quizzes, including the ones in question here, are carefully sourced to the reading material. On this quiz, questions were sourced to the Qur\u2019an, the hadiths, and the sira (biography) of Mohammed, and other reputable source material.\u201d And indeed, the three questions reflect basic facts that are readily established by reference to Islamic texts and teachings and numerous statements of terrorists themselves.<\/p>\n
Despite this, the student emailed Damask to complain that he was \u201coffended\u201d by these questions, as they were \u201cin distaste of Islam.\u201d Damask recounted: \u201cUntil this point, notably, the student had expressed no reservations about the course material and indeed he said he enjoyed the course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damask sent two lengthy emails to the student responding to his complaints, but to no avail. A social media campaign began against Damask on the College\u2019s Instagram account. Damask notes: \u201cAn unrelated school post about a school contest was hijacked, with supporters of the student posting angry, threatening, inflammatory and derogatory messages about the quiz, the school, and myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point, College officials should have defended Professor Damask and the principle of free inquiry, but that would require a sane academic environment. Scottsdale Community College officials, Damask said, \u201cstepped in to assert on a new Instagram post that the student was correct and that I was wrong \u2013 with no due process and actually no complaint even being filed \u2013 and that he would receive full credit for all the quiz questions related to Islam and terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
On May 1, Damask had a conference call with Kathleen Iudicello, Scottsdale Community College\u2019s Dean of Instruction, and Eric Sells, the College\u2019s Public Relations Marketing Manager. Damask recalls: \u201cI was not offered to write any part of the school\u2019s response, and there was no discussion of academic freedom or whether the College was even supportive of me to teach about Islamic terrorism. The very first point I made with them on the call (and virtually the only input I had) is that I insisted that the College\u2019s release was to have no mention of any actions to be required to be taken by me personally, I was very clear about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Predictably, Iudicello and Sells ignored that. They issued an apology to the student and to the \u201cIslamic community,\u201d and stated on the College\u2019s Instagram page that Damask would be \u201crequired\u201d to apologize to the student for the quiz questions, as the questions were \u201cinappropriate\u201d and \u201cinaccurate,\u201d and would be permanently removed from Damask\u2019s exams.<\/p>\n
Damask also had three phone calls with Iudicello, who gave him a bracing introduction into today\u2019s academic funhouse world, where if someone is offended by the truth, it\u2019s the truth that has to be deep-sixed. \u201cDuring one call with Iudicello,\u201d Damask recounts, \u201cshe stated that my quiz questions were \u2018Islamophobic,\u2019 that before continuing to have any further class content on Islamic terrorism I would likely need to meet with an Islamic religious leader to go over the content, and that I would likely need to take a class (perhaps at Arizona State) taught by a Muslim before teaching about Islamic terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe irony here,\u201d says Damask, \u201cis that literally during this phone call, I and my wife were tossing socks and jammies and our nine-year-old grandson\u2019s toys into a suitcase to get the hell out of the house because of the death threats made by Islamic commenters on the College\u2019s Instagram page.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n