Shocking: Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali

Posted on | April 17, 2014 | 52 Comments

The wretched cowardice of Brandeis University in rescinding an honorary degree for human rights activist Aayan Hirsi Ali surprised a lot of people. A victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), Ali was the target of terroristic threats in the Netherlands for speaking out against Islamic oppression of women. The question was asked, “Where’s the feminist anger at Brandeis over Ayaan Hirsi Ali?”

Brace yourself for the answer: Phyllis Chesler looked at the Brandeis faculty petition against Ali and found that 21% of the signatures came from faculty associated with the university’s Women and Gender Studies (WGS) program. As a matter of fact, it appears that the controversial petition actually originated with WGS faculty members.

The first two names on the petition are both members of the Women and Gender Studies faculty: Karen Hansen and Dian Fox. Assuming that the authors of the petition would also be the first signers, this is significant, as is the fact that four other of the first 10 signers were either core faculty or associate faculty of the Brandeis WGS program: ChaeRan Freeze, Bernadette J. Brooten, Mary Baine Campbell and Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman. The faculty petition claimed that, by honoring Aayan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis would suggest “to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam . . . thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus,” and concluded: “We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali’s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples.”

Perhaps the Brandeis University feminists could send their young female students on a field trip to Tehran, Kabul or Mogadishu to protest against this “triumphalist narrative.” Meanwhile, the Iraqi parliament is considering a law that would legalize marriage to 9-year-old girls, and a 12-year-old girl died after being gang-raped in Pakistan:

The incident took place in the village of Khushi Muhammad Arain, located in the town of Kadhan. The 12-year-old victim used to go to the seminary to learn how to read the Holy Quran, according to her bereaved father.
A teacher at the seminary, along with three young boys who are said to be in grade 10, are accused in the case.
“Three days before her death, my younger son came home shouting that he had heard my daughter screaming from a room in the madrassah whose doors were locked,” said her father . . .

Yeah, too bad she died. Otherwise she might have some day attended Brandeis University, where Aayan Hirsi Ali can’t speak, because the Women and Gender Studies faculty are fighting against “a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples.”

<br />

Category: Education, Feminism, Islam

Comments

52 Responses to “Shocking: Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a hero for women and Brandeis University shames itself | Batshit Crazy News
April 17th, 2014 @ 4:57 pm

[…] It is Brandeis feminists who went after Ayann Hirsi Ali? Do they recognize she is fighting for women given their mistreatment in Muslim societies? This […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 17th, 2014 @ 4:58 pm

Do they recognize she is fighting for women given their mistreatment in Muslim societies? This shows how dishonest and hypocritical the Feminist Movement is. They put their “multiculturalism” in supporting Muslim “patriarchs” that make Doug Phillips look downright liberal over supporting one of their own sisters in fighting the good fight on behalf of women.
DaveO
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

The Feminists come from the Communists, who were the money-men for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and hundreds of Islamist organizations over the decades. Ali is an enemy of Islam and therefore an enemy of Communism and therefore an enemy of Feminism. Nothing personal, just ideology. And she consorts with white men, which shows Feminists are instinctively racists.
M. Thompson
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:06 pm

Women’s “Studies” is nothing but agit-prop quite poorly disguised as study.
Phil_McG
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:12 pm

”We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali’s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples.”

You’re giving the game away, girls.

Feminism isn’t about helping women.

It’s about hatred of the white man and the Christian, capitalist civilisation he built.
Phil_McG
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:16 pm

This. Has there ever been a Womens Studies professor ever who has concluded “you know, women have it pretty good in the modern West…”
Bozikek
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:33 pm

The core complaint, she makes them look like the chumps they are.
RS
April 17th, 2014 @ 5:43 pm

Well, of course. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the illusion of grievance, manufactured from thin air, when there is an actual victim of oppression staring you in the face. Hirsi Ali is living reproof to the faux outrage in which these harridans traffic and which they use to bilk unsuspecting parents, students and taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
maniakmedic
April 17th, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

Stop the #waronwomen… by women!
maniakmedic
April 17th, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

Stop the #waronwomen… by women!
RKae
April 17th, 2014 @ 6:38 pm

Hey! Hirsi Ali is merely fighting to save women’s lives! Those faculty members are bravely trying to remake our oppressive pronouns!
RKae
April 17th, 2014 @ 6:38 pm

Hey! Hirsi Ali is merely fighting to save women’s lives! Those faculty members are bravely trying to remake our oppressive pronouns!
Anamika
April 17th, 2014 @ 6:49 pm

Religion is being used to oppress women and gays in many parts of the world; including Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. There are cultural factors as well, not related to any particular religion. There are laws being passed, citing religion (including Christianity) in some countries that make gay relationships punishable by death.

RSM’s citing of the Pakistani rape case as an example of Islamic religious oppression is utterly baseless. The article was published by a Pakistani news source, and it clearly informs that the law of the land (of an Islamic state) is working to punish the criminals. The religious institutions in Pak would want the rapists to be punished. A gang rape of 12 year old school girl in a place of learning (religious or otherwise) could have happened in India, China or any place else.

The Iraqi situation is alarming though, but they site cultural practices, not religious strictures to support the law. If the latter were the case you would see this law passed in Pakistan and other Islamic states. We have instances like Uganda where lawmakers wanted to make gay relationships punishable by death inspired by their Christian beliefs.

Ayaan was a victim of oppressive cultural practices & religious fundamentalism (folks who hijack Islam for their own purposes.) It is precisely because she is anti-Islam and not vocally anti-organized religion in general, that the right wingers see her as a martyr and have taken up her “cause” in the current situation.
Zohydro
April 17th, 2014 @ 7:26 pm

English is largely gender-neutral grammatically already compared with virtually all other Indo-European languages and the Semitic languages… I wonder how they’ll tackle that problem in these other tongues where grammatical gender is an essential feature!
ZZZZZZZZ
April 17th, 2014 @ 7:28 pm

Gee, and here I thought a leftie was finally going to honestly portray Islam as the Religion For Encouraging Barbarism … …

… … until you started blabbing about culture, and deftly foisted that off on Western religion.

So, never mind. Yawn.
Zohydro
April 17th, 2014 @ 7:31 pm

Get your jammies on and grab your favourite plushy! It’s off to bed with you…
; )
RKae
April 17th, 2014 @ 7:39 pm

Only English is evil! All other languages are allowed to have gender all over the place, just like all other cultures are allowed to oppress women. “It’s their culture! It’s OK!”
richard mcenroe
April 17th, 2014 @ 8:00 pm

You know, it’s ironic when feminists whine about a woman’s right to get drunk and stupid and then punish the man for her lack of judgment, or when they complain about not making as much when they don’t work as much…

…but when they start supporting the butchery and mutilation of women that is built into so much of Islamic culture, it kind of stops being funny.
richard mcenroe
April 17th, 2014 @ 8:01 pm

Perhaps the Msses Olsen and Fox should hop along over to Iran or Suden for their solidarity clitoridectomies?
Julie Pascal
April 17th, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

Um… no.

Why? Because at the end of the day there isn’t anything they can do about any other part of the world. There is no *power* involved in fighting for women in Islamic countries.

There is only power to be gained where power can be exercised.

Thus the best place for women on the face of the planet must be portrayed as systematically oppressive. What they HATE about Ali, truly truly HATE about her…

She laughs at them.

I’ve seen interviews with her and I’m not exaggerating that. Someone said something about oppression in the West and she got belly-laughs and told him he was stupid.

That’s why they really do HATE her.
Julie Pascal
April 17th, 2014 @ 8:06 pm

I was writing a comment below and I remembered an interview that I saw with Ali. The interviewer asked her a question assuming the oppression of women in the West (trying to tie it into something his audience could relate to, probably) and she started laughing at him. Really and truly laughing at him. Scornfully.

The thing is, that the truth is, that this woman wouldn’t give the women and gender studies ladies the time of day. Nor would she be *polite* about what she thinks of their grievances.
Guest
April 17th, 2014 @ 8:47 pm

the democrat war on women continues…
maniakmedic
April 17th, 2014 @ 9:03 pm

Yeah, I’d probably be rolling on the floor too if I’d not only been raised in a culture with female genital mutilation, but experienced it myself and then had to listen to a bunch of priviledged white whackjobs screaming about oppression and the male hijacking of their uteri.

What could Ali possibly know about having your uterus or vagina occupied by those evil Western cultural throwbacks? She was just raised in a culture where the clitoris is violently removed and the vagina sewn up to make sure the females don’t go whoring around the oasis before they’re married off to a guy 2-3 times their age. Pfft. She lived in a feminist paradise while we all live in a heteronormative cismale patriarchal hellhole of patriarchy.
sarah wells
April 17th, 2014 @ 9:03 pm

A true shame. Just shameful.
darleenclick
April 17th, 2014 @ 9:27 pm

But ZOMG the microaggression of enduring the Male Gaze on campus and the unbearable pallor of Too Many White People, it just as horrible as anything Ali has experienced, I mean just look at what the well-fed highly paid Womyn’s Studies professors have to put up with!
VoodooEconomics
April 17th, 2014 @ 9:30 pm

So they rescinded the honorary doctorate because Hirsi Ali does not paint a broad enough stroke. The petitioners feel similar actions pointed out by Hirsi Ali happen even on the Brandeis campus. So i must ask:

1. Where on the Brandeis campus are 9 year old girls allowed/forced to marry?
2. Where on the Brandeis campus are there advocates and practitioners of FGM?

I would be helpful to point out even the slightest moral equivalency. I can wait…although i am sure it will be quite a while.
You’ll Never Guess Who Led The Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali At Brandeis | The Lonely Conservative
April 17th, 2014 @ 10:09 pm

[…] You’ve probably heard about how Brandeis University revoked an honorary degree for Aayan Hirsi Ali because she speaks out against Islam. Well, now we know who led the charge – feminists. […]
Behind_You1
April 17th, 2014 @ 11:42 pm

And free condoms. Women might as well be shackled to the kitchen radiator if they don’t have their free condoms.
MissTrixieB
April 17th, 2014 @ 11:57 pm

These Brandis idiots believe the only “war against women” concerns abortion, contraception & the like. If they are presented with evidence of the atrocities committed daily against women & girls, their political narrative will implode thereby confirming their idiocy & prejudice.
Lyle Petersen
April 18th, 2014 @ 12:48 am

It’s simpler than that. Hirsi Ali has praised the Western world in her works, which makes her an ENEMY of the left, and all enemies are to be destroyed, regardless of their personal background.
Funeral guy
April 18th, 2014 @ 1:50 am

In other words, “If we drag Islam into this it will step all over our message that all the world’s evils stem from right-wing Christians.”
K-Bob
April 18th, 2014 @ 5:17 am

Thank doG for prefixes and suffixes!
Kirby McCain
April 18th, 2014 @ 8:35 am

If the ‘Slut Walk” crew would protest outside some of these embassies or the U.N. they might actually do some good. Unfortunately, their Marxist handlers aren’t about to let that happen.
Dana
April 18th, 2014 @ 8:57 am

Gee, that’s dumb! Religion and culture are inextricably intertwined, with one “informing” the other. Religion and culture are inseparable; if you could separate religion from culture, both would change.
Dana
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:05 am

You were too narrow in your questions; they should have been along the lines of “Where in the United States are 9 year old girls allowed/forced to marry?”

Well, we had such a case, that of Warren Jeffs and his cult, and the result of that is that Mr Jeffs was tried, convicted, and sentenced to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. Perhaps Anamika’s Ugandan version of Christianity allows for homosexual activity to be illegal, or a (Muslim) Nigerian senator to marry a nine year old, but in the United States, our Christianity and our culture leaves homosexual activity legal — and, apparently even celebrated in some of the more stupid areas — and we lock up men who try to “marry” children.
Dana
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:07 am

Would that the entire Womens and Gender Studies Department be outsourced, and those noble professors be required to teach their drivel at the Kampala campus of Brandeis University.
Bozikek
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:28 am

That’s not true… its a lesbian recruiting tool as well.
maniakmedic
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:41 am

There’s a reason the United States rose from a tradition of Judeo-Christian values to become a beacon of freedom and justice. And there is a reason it is now sinking into a mire of unexceptionalism and corruption. Only the dumbest of the dumb are unable to see the defining difference.
M. Thompson
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:55 am

But then I’d be repeating myself unnecesscarily.
richard mcenroe
April 18th, 2014 @ 10:30 am

That, and “thje Christians won’t cut out throats or splash acid in our faces.”
richard mcenroe
April 18th, 2014 @ 10:30 am

Not true. I’m sure they went right back to their Israel-divestment campaign immediately after they signed the petition, in solidarity with the women of Palestine.
News You Can Use for April 18 | Palo Verde Republican Women
April 18th, 2014 @ 11:03 am

[…] I-D-I-O-T-S. “The first two names on the petition are both members of the Women and Gender Studies faculty: Karen Hansen and Dian Fox. Assuming that the authors of the petition would also be the first signers, this is significant, as is the fact that four other of the first 10 signers were either core faculty or associate faculty of the Brandeis WGS program: ChaeRan Freeze, Bernadette J. Brooten, Mary Baine Campbell and Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman. The faculty petition claimed that, by honoring Aayan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis would suggest “to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam . . . thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus,” and concluded: ”We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali’s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples.” Shocking: Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali […]
Is Sodomy Still Sodomy, If the Victim Gets the Part? | Regular Right Guy
April 18th, 2014 @ 3:42 pm

[…] Shocking: Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali […]
You Just Never Know | South Carolina Liberty
April 18th, 2014 @ 4:17 pm

[…] Read more. […]
K-Bob
April 18th, 2014 @ 7:19 pm

Not for a while, yet.
K-Bob
April 18th, 2014 @ 7:21 pm

That’s only because leftists really love that Moral Equivalency argument.

Why not stick with the facts if the case?
K-Bob
April 18th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

Yeah, but they serve great lamb and hummous there.

What?
Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali
April 18th, 2014 @ 9:26 pm

[…] times. So guess who forced Brandeis from allowing Aayan Hirsi Ali to speak. None other than the so called feminists who always whine in this country how woman are treated. Apparently, the feminists of Brandeis […]
Kirby McCain
April 19th, 2014 @ 6:09 am

Muslim men seem to enjoy gang rape. Sydney Gang Rapes ring a bell?
Brandeis University Gender Studies Faculty Behind Petition Against Ayaan Hirsi Ali
April 19th, 2014 @ 7:55 am

[…] to gentlemen at The Other McCain the petition that led to the rescinding of an honorary degree in Social Justice studies from […]