David Horowitz: Still Dogging Brown

Brown University, my controversy-prone alma mater, is awash in its biggest political drama since Bill O’Reilly declared Sex Power God, the annual LGBTA dance, less safe than Baghdad. (This is a not inaccurate statement, but only if you translate “safe” to mean “devoid of people wearing body glitter.”) First the women’s center and the Brown Hillel invited Nonie Darwish, a Palestinian pro-Israel writer and activist, to give a speech. Then the women’s center dropped out. This is where things get murky. Either the campus Muslim group put pressure on Hillel to uninvited Darwish, or Hillel realized that it might be awkward for the Jewish group on campus to be the sole sponsor of someone so critical of Islam.

Either way, they rescinded their invite. And then the conservative (and, uh, hawish liberal) blogosphere freaked out, as blogospheres are wont to do. Now, apparently, the invitation has returned, but not without a lot of angst on everyone’s part.

Those of you who follow college campus turmoils might remember a time before Bill O’Reilly filmed duct-tape-and-fishnet clad students on the dance floor, back when the biggest school controversy involved loathsome conservative David Horowitz taking out an ad in the Brown Daily Herald calling slavery reparations “racist.” What drives me particularly crazy about Horowitz is the feverish tone of his rhetoric, which never ever calms down; both as a leftist and a right-winger, he seems more enamored of extremism than his actual cause.

Speaking of whom, guess who called Nonie Darwish “a woman of great courage” on her book jacket? I’ll give you a hint: find Rick Santorum’s praise and scroll upward.