President vs. Ex-Terrorist

If Obama is met with controversy, wouldn’t you think that a convicted terrorist involved in 19 bombings and 10 bank robberies. The University of Massachusetts must not have. The professors decided to invite Raymond Luc Levasseur to speak at their school Nov. 5. Due to heavy controversy, the event was cancelled.

Not even criticism from the Gov. Deval Patrick could persuade the professors from pushing beyond the first cancellation to a reschedule of the speech. The professors claimed that due to academic freedom, they are entitled to allowing this man to speak. Academic freedom is basically the idea that professors can give their opinions on subjects and that students can be introduced to many ideas. Check it out. The administration did not step in and take action in order to preserve academic freedom.

Now, it was definitely a surprise to find out that people would protest Obama in a school, but it does not surprise me very much that a convicted felon would gain some flak. The arguments are that he has done his time and paid his price so he should be able to speak. They want to bring him in to talk at “Amherst Libraries’ fifth annual Colloquium on Social Change. Along with writers Todd Gitlin and Raymond Mungo, Levasseur was to represent the social unrest of the late 1960s.”

Other people feel that since he murdered a police officer and was involved with these bombings he has lost his privileges. They also fear that he will use his speech to recruit members to his once formed United Freedom Front that he was involved in before going to jail.

At what point do you lose or gain privileges to speak to our youth? Presidency? Early parole and honoring you parole for 3 months? Come on people, we need to build up some consistency and cohesion. If people are worried about Obama pushing his agenda, then I would say we need to be extremely concerned about a newly released felon pushing his agenda!
I do appreciate what academic freedom has allowed professors to do, but pushing past the non support of administration and past the total disagreement of a governor is a bit foolish. Academic freedom should only have so much freedom. If the administration is strongly against it, they should have the power to shut it down.
If the professors do go through with the speech, they need to strictly monitor what Mr. Levasseur has to say.

What do you think?


Philip