Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

June 5, 2017

Why the City University of New York Should Not Have Allowed a Bigoted Anti-Zionist to Speak at Its Commencement

Linda Sarsour and the First Amendment.

Last Thursday, after some controversy, Linda Sarsour, the anti-Israel boycott activist and leader of the January 21 women’s march, addressed students of the City University of New York (CUNY) at their graduation ceremony. As a reason for her to have been disinvited, Sarsour’s critics pointed to her praise for Saudi Arabia’s treatment of its female subjects, her ferocious anti-Zionism, her belief in anti-American conspiracy theories (e.g., that the 2009 “underwear bomber” was a CIA agent), and her public, vulgar sniping at the Dutch-Somali intellectual Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In response, various CUNY faculty members argued that canceling her talk would violate principles of free speech. A.J. Caschetta disagrees:

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