San Francisco State University (SFSU) was just in the headlines for allowing fascist proponents of trans madness to chase and assault Riley Gaines, a champion swimmer and defender of women’s sports. Now it’s demonstrating once again that it is a fervent defender of its luckless students from everything the Left is worried about, no matter how ridiculous. “Islamophobia” is on that list, and so is investigating a professor for showing his class an image of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, even though the professor is from Iran and was showing them an image from the Shi’ite Muslim tradition. Oh, and freedom of speech? Come on, man!
It all started last fall, when Maziar Behrooz, an associate professor of history at SFU – oh, sorry, that’s SFSU – was teaching a course he has taught many times before, on the history of the Islamic world. During this course, he shows his class an image of Muhammad made not by “Islamophobes,” but by pious Shi’ite Muslims. According to a Wednesday report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Behrooz shows a drawing of Muhammad that “can be bought at markets in Tehran near holy shrines. Many Shiite Muslims have such drawings on walls in their homes, said Behrooz, who was born in Tehran and has written books on Iran’s political history.”
This should not have been remotely controversial, and hadn’t been for years, but one Sunni Muslim who was in Behrooz’s class last fall took umbrage. He met Behrooz outside of class and told him that it was “not permissible for an image of the Prophet Muhammad to be shown in any shape or form.” Behrooz was taken aback: “This is the first time that this has happened. I was not prepared for somebody to be offended, in a secular university, talking about history rather than religion.” He told that student that what he displayed in class was at the professor’s discretion, and that should have been that, But then the student complained to Behrooz’s department chair and, according to the professor, to “authorities higher up.”
Now the university is conducting an investigation. Instead of reminding the complaining student about freedom of speech and what a university is supposed to be, the university’s Office of Equity Programs and Compliance is investigating Behrooz to determine whether his conduct violates the California State University nondiscrimination policy.
This is reminiscent of the incident at Hamline University in Minnesota last December, when another professor, Erika López Prater, was fired for showing an image of Muhammad, despite the fact that she also only intended to illustrate a point about art history, not make a point about freedom of speech. Nevertheless, university officials said that the lesson was “undeniably…Islamophobic” and scolded the professor for failing to demonstrate “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom.” The backdrop of that “respect,” of course, was the violent riots and murders committed by Islamic jihadis worldwide over depictions of Muhammad. But “respect” shown to violent threats and intimidation doesn’t really pacify the situation; it only invites more threats and intimidation, now that they’ve been proven to work.
Related: Professor Sues University After Being Fired for Showing Images of Muhammad in Class
Meanwhile, at universities all over the country, patriotic speakers and defenders of common sense against the prevailing Leftist madness are shouted down, subjected to administrator-engineered walkouts (as I was at Stanford University), and menaced outright, as was Riley Gaines at SFSU. It’s thus clear that this “respect” that Hamline officials spoke about goes only in one direction: to Leftists, and to the Left’s designated victim classes. Students and speakers who hold opinions that dissent from the Left’s line are not entitled even to a modicum of respect, or any consideration at all. As Just the News points out about SFSU, “the public university has a history of going easy on disruptive protests against disfavored viewpoints.”
Our nation’s universities today are the product of the success of the Left’s “long march through the institutions.” They are not any longer institutions of higher learning; they are radioactive wastelands of far-left indoctrination. Accordingly, if our wounded society is ever going to heal, the fact that public universities receive taxpayer funds must one day be addressed. Why should Americans have to pay these institutions to indoctrinate our children with Leftist authoritarianism and make them hostile to the principles that made the country great? No university that doesn’t allow for the free exchange of ideas should receive a penny of public funding. But we’re a long way off from even seeing any politician advocate that they be cut off.
