Have we really come to the point where the Dalai Lama is too controversial for some college students? This is madness.
Red Alert Politics reports:
Too “politically incorrect”: Students want Dalai Lama banned from campus
Social justice warriors can find a way to be offended by anything. Even the Dalai Lama’s words are too controversial for their delicate ears.
Students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are protesting their school’s announcement that the Dalai Lama will speak at their commencement ceremony in June. Chinese students studying at the American campus said he was an oppressive figure given his stance on Tibetan independence. Meanwhile, left-wing students are angered by his criticism of the Communist Party of China, Quartz Media reported.
A few hours after the announcement, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) released a note in Mandarin on WeChat saying it had communicated with the Chinese consulate.
“UCSD is a place for students to cultivate their minds and enrich their knowledge. Currently, the various actions undertaken by the university have contravened the spirit of respect, tolerance, equality, and earnestness — the ethos upon which the university is built,” the note stated. “These actions have also dampened the academic enthusiasm of Chinese students and scholars. If the university insists on acting unilaterally and inviting the Dalai Lama to give a speech at the graduation ceremony, our association vows to take further measures to firmly resist the university’s unreasonable behavior. Specific details of these measures will be outlined in our future statements.”
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Comments
its definitely the llama part… #llamaslivesmatter…..
Probably because monks can be a fire hazard. After all, if Thích Quảng Đức could do others might do it too.
Damn! For years I was under the impression that no one else remembered this man, or Madame Nhu’s vulgar comment about wishing for another “monk barbecue show”.
Okay, I can completely understand why students from mainland China would have problems with the Dalai Lama speaking at their graduation ceremony. However, the school should go ahead with their plans; students should not be able to dictate terms for speakers and the Dalai Lama is an inspiring speaker!
[sarcasm]
On the other hand, allowing a man who has the temerity to speak out against the Communist Party of China, a group that has worked tirelessly over the decades to control the country’s burgeoning population through the mechanisms of nutritional-intake-control and injections of beneficial minerals (usually administered by Doctors Kalashnikov and Tokarev) to spread his radical ideas on campus? That is beyond the pale!
[/sarcasm]
these ‘students’ should be invited to leave and never come back –
in other words STFU or go and do NOT return.
Human Lives Matter…..
The UCSD student body is almost 50% Asian. 19% of UCSD students are International Students and most of these are Asian/East Asian. The number of international students has increased by 751% in the past 10 years.
http://studentresearch.ucsd.edu/_files/stats-data/enroll/ughome.pdf
I’m guessing this will be difficult for UCSD because the UCs as a whole are recruiting more and more international students to pay full freight. The presence of the Dalai Lama may be bad for business.
So, now we have reached the point where American Institutions such as UCSD feel the need to kow-tow to Beijing’s political directives.
The authors of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 all just jumped out of their graves, pointed, and yelled “WE TOLD YOU SO!!!”
(probably had something to do with that witch’s spell last night)
” his stance on Tibetan independence … his criticism of the Communist Party of China, …”
First Amendment free-speech precedent hasn’t protected all speech equally; for example, commercial speech (such as advertising) may have less protection than other types of speech.
BUT (subject to time, place and manner restrictions) political speech has always enjoyed the highest level of free-speech protection. And the students’ objections are all too obviously based on the political content of the Dalai Lama’s speech. And, since UCSD is a public university, it is fully constrained by the the First Amendment.
If school administrators can’t or won’t protect even this most protected type of speech then I fail to see why any taxpayer, directly or indirectly, should be compelled to support such an institution.
And aside from legalities or political consequences, how can anyone maintain respect for such a place? No one need agree with the Dalai Lama’s political viewpoints (and I personally have no reason to value his opinions over anyone else’s), but, surely attempts to prevent him from speaking violate the spirit of everything such an institution might stand for.
Are we now letting Red China dictate what can be said on our campuses? Rename the college UC Tiananman Square.
God forbid that the Chinese should be “offended” by a man that rightly objects to his country being “liberated” by the PRC.