I share the outrage of Jay Bergman, a Central Connecticut State University professor and Brandeis alum, who has sent the following letter to the university’s president, Jehuda Reinharz:
As an alumnus of Brandeis, I was appalled to read in Seth Gitell’s
article in yesterday’s New York Sun that the father of Alisa Flatow ‘96,
who was murdered in Israel by Palestinian terrorists not long before she
was to graduate from Brandeis, was privately discouraged from attending
the talk at Brandeis by Jimmy Carter out of fear that he’d ask a
question that might embarrass the former President.
Since leaving the Presidency, Jimmy Carter has degenerated into a crankwho in public statements resurrects the classic anti-semitic accusation
that Jews control the media and the politicians of the countries where
they live to advance objectives that are not in those countries’
interest. He has also shamefully smeared the only Jewish state in the
world as an apartheid state, and implicitly justified Palestinian
terrorism against Israelis.
Nevertheless, as long as Brandeis students and faculty invited Carter tospeak on campus, nothing should have been done to stop them. However,
to discourage the father of a Brandeis student who was slain by
Palestinian terrorists from questioning Carter is to engage in
censorship. Whoever in your administration was responsible for this act
of moral cowardice should be dismissed or at least strongly reprimanded.
Stifling the free speech of Alisa Flatow’s father was disgraceful, and Iam sure Justice Brandeis, if he were alive, would be just as outraged as
I am.