Exorcising Saint Louis University’s intellectual dybbuks

posted at 4:55 pm on October 6, 2009 by Repurblican
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Every true horror fan has seen or heard about the film The Exorcist. Set in Washington, D.C., the movie chronicles the demonic possession of a girl and the actions taken by two priests from Georgetown (a Jesuit school) to save her life. What few may realize is that the “actual events” underpinning the film occurred to a great extent on Saint Louis University’s campus, also a Jesuit institution.

And If recent events are any indicator, perhaps SLU’s due for an exorcism sequel, this time of the intellectual variety.

Conservative activist David Horowitz will not be speaking at St. Louis University this month after school officials raised objections about the title and content of his speech, “Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights.”…

SLU said in a statement that it did not “ban” Horowitz from campus. Rather, the school was concerned that the event could be viewed as “attacking another faith and seeking to cause derision on campus.”

Horowitz, reached by phone on Friday, called the university’s decision “outrageous.” He said his speech is about what he sees as a campaign against Jews and the state of Israel on many college campuses.

“I have spoken at 400 universities,” he said. “This is the first time my speech has been censored and stopped by an administration. And they are supposed to be the guardians of intellectual discourse.”

Indeed, the University’s having a devil of a time managing this debacle, and given the Hell SLU’s getting at home and across the country, it’s time for an intervention. And to be sure, it’s far from a partisan issue; the derision for SLU’s decision criss-crosses the intellectual divide, with Horowitz’s own critics variously calling SLU’s speaker policy possibly “the worst in the country” and SLU one of a “small group of campuses that are universities in name only.”

As an alumnus of two of its undergraduate programs, a student in its law program, and former chair of its largest speakers bureau, you can imagine how this might trouble me. SLU has a long history of open intellectual inquiry, but its unevenness in promoting student events consistent with its intellectual and Catholic missions has begun to show itself more nakedly in recent years. In 2007, I criticized the University’s decision to host Holocaust revisionist and Hezbollah supporter Norman Finkelstein, a former DePaul professor who was denied tenure, a willful stooge for Middle Eastern militants, and dare I say, an apologist for “Islamo-Fascists” — radical militants who use the Islamic faith to oppress Muslims and non-Muslims alike. When a speaker goes on Hezbollah TV to celebrate the “courage” and “discipline” of a terrorist group (says Finkelstein, “I respect that”), perhaps the University should question the propriety of the invite.

Yet I took Finkelstein’s event to signal, if nothing else, a baseline by which the University would judge future speakers: Anything short of (and sadly, including) providing overt cover for despotic, oppressive regimes was A-OK in the Billiken Book o’ Speaker Criteria and consistent with the University’s Mission Statement, a statement now so warped by administrative precedent to be practically meaningless.

And yet SLU, accepting of a man who associates with these oppressive regimes, couldn’t get over the fact that Horowitz would assail those that Finkelstein would defend. Or perhaps more specifically, Dean of Students and Assistant Vice President Scott Smith couldn’t, the University’s face on this disaster.

It’s obvious that the intersection of politics and faith is a volatile one, but the term “Islamo-Fascism”  ispatently accurate, if uncomfortable — if a Christian regime was using state power to hang homosexuals, murder women for transgressions against the faith, or indoctrinate their children to become terrorists, they’d legitimately be termed Christo-Fascist. And that talk, I wouldn’t doubt, would be hosted by SLU in a heartbeat. And I’d support it, such documented evidence being what it is.

Horowitz and the conservative community generally in St. Louis aren’t taking this lightly. Via Gateway Pundit, this morning’s interview with Horowitz by local radio talker Jamie Allman:

At least one caller to Dana Loesch’s radio program yesterday suggested hosting an event with Horowitz across the street from SLU, an obvious mockery of my institution. Factor in that the caller was the parent of a current student and was offering $1000 to make the event happen, and you have the makings of a public relations nightmare.

It’s this nightmare that I want the University to avert, or at least wake up from. Horowitz should speak based simply on his own merits, but particularly in light of the University’s track record. When the school mascot, the Billiken, is being redefined as a symbol for an “odd combination of aggression and cowardice,” it’s probably time for Fr. President Lawrence Biondi to preside over an exorcism of his own and facilitate the event as it was planned. An intellectual dybbuk needs repatriation to Gehenna, and the head of our University may be the only one who can coax him from good ol’ Billy.

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