Here’s Andrew Bostom on New York University’s cowardly surrender to Islamist intimidation: NYU’s Cartoonish Quarantine.

This past Wednesday evening, March 29, 2006, I participated in a panel discussion of the Danish cartoon jihad where life imitated art as depressing farce through the actions of the New York University Administration. The NYU Administration’s toxic combination of moral cowardice and absurd, offensive “reasoning” forced a Hobson’s choice upon the courageous NYU Objectivist Club student organizers  of this important forum: If the cartoons were to be displayed, they could either limit admission to the event to the “NYU community” and exclude the over 150 off-campus guests who had registered to attend the event, or (as the students ultimately decided) to keep the event open to the (pre-registered) public, agree not to show the Danish cartoons. The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)  website has posted E-mails from NYU administrator Robert Butler  on March 27 and 28 documenting this ultimatum.

And NYU spokesman John Beckman mimicked the pious wisdom of the Al Azhar “doctors” of The Marrakesh One-Two with this astonishing pronouncement:

Realistically, one can have a discussion on smallpox without actually handing out the live virus to the audience.

As a physician and epidemiologist having studied both the historical impact of past infectious plagues, such as small pox, and managed real patients suffering from cruel, deadly viral illnesses still extant today, it is hard to comprehend the warped mindset that makes a glib analogy between deliberate exposure to a highly contagious, lethal virus capable of causing indiscriminate, mass death, and viewing twelve rather tame cartoons which might offend the sensibilities of some Muslims.

Sans cartoons, and amidst intensive (full metal jacket/body scan) security—(Whose “sensibilities” were offended by that state-of-siege requirement one might ask the NYU administrators? Were those same administrators  aware that the unhinged, openly jihadist supporting British Muslim “journalist” Yvonne Ridley had personally intervened to foment Muslim student unrest at NYU?)—the panel discussion did proceed. Excellent blow by blow accounts of this enlightening evening are available from bloggers who attended. (Atlas Shrugged has provided the most detailed assessment).