From my new “CMU Guy”:

Jonah,
I’m a Junior at CMU, so here’s what I know-
Basically, no one thought bringing the Shabazz guy to campus was a
good idea. There’s a discussion board (electronic, that is) where
people argue over stuff like that, and once everyone had seen what the
guy has actually said on his own website, there was no one, right,
left, or far left, who uttered a peep in this guy’s defense, which is
obviously a good thing.
The Hillel article implies that the University brought the Shabazz guy
in. Not really true. They are bringing Norman Finkelstein, but Shabazz
was brought by a student organization. “Who payed for it?” is somewhat
complicated. Student groups get money from whatever they fundraise
plus some money from the student government, which gets its money from
a fee every student has to pay them if they want to be in any student
group. The student government has total control over this money, and
it demands all kinds of bizarre accounting to try to separate what
student government pays for and what groups pay for through
fundraising. The university administration has no say anywhere in this
system. I don’t know how the fundraising/student government money
works for the group in question, so its possible that the student body
as a whole theoretically footed the bill, that the organization payed
for it out of its own, non-student government pocket, or most likely
some combination.
CMU did “play host” to Shabazz, and the administration sent out a mass
email today about their speaker ploicy and Shabazz in particular. I’ll
quote the whole thing below, but the bottom line is, they think
Shabazz is a pretty loathsome guy and would never have brought him
themselves, but they didn’t ban him because they have a policy of not
banning anyone brought by a student group. I personally think this is
a pretty reasonable policy.
Now, I didn’t actually see the guy as I was at CPAC that weekend (and
I’m evil whitey, so apparently I couldn’t have seen him anyway). so
I’m taking Hillel’s description of the event at face-value. From what
I’ve heard, the bit about them basically keeping whitey out of the
auditorium is true. I don’t know about the rest of it, but I’ll go dig
up the campus newspaper and find some people who were there. If it’s
exactly as written , the CMU police really should be ashamed.
I do think the Hillel article is being more than a bit overblown about
Jews being particularly put-upon at CMU. I’m not one myself (although
I’m pretty philo-semitic), but this doesn’t fit with what I know about
CMU. I know the president of the CMU Hillel chapter, and I’ll ask her
about it in case I’ve completely missed the boat and get back to you
with an update. The article doesn’t mention it, but the night before
the Shabazz speech, A group called “Tartans4Israel” hosted a
speaker/panel event called “IDF: Breaking the Myth,” in which the
speaker, a former IDF officer, talked about how the IDF actually
works, its rules of engagement, etc. They asked the College
Republicans to co-sponsor it (I’m an officer in the CR’s), which we
agreed to do. I didn’t personally get to go (as I was traveling to
CPAC that night), but it’s definitely the type of event needed on more
campuses.
You can use my name if you like, but I think it be much cooler to be
your “CMU Guy”