Intolerant left strikes again

[Cosmo]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Censored Arizona Student Challenges Campus Thought Police
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002
WASHINGTON – A student at Arizona State University says he will fight back in the courts against leftist efforts to blackball him and threaten his future. The case, if pursued vigorously through whatever appeals may ensue, could force a showdown on the issue of campus “speech police.”
“That’s just what they’ve done is wrecked my life,” the student Oubay Shahbandar told NewsMax.com.

He says he will take legal action against the university and/or officials there because of harassment he has endured for his conservative political beliefs.

Tainted

A lawsuit is contemplated not so much to retaliate for the bullying (publicized last week by NewsMax.com), but to erase what he sees as an unjust blot on his record, one that could hinder his efforts to get into top law schools, in preparation for a political career to which he aspires. The leftist establishment does not go out of its way to help bright young conservatives who might be future senators or governors. Expect them to attempt to block that career path before it gets off the ground.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Shahbandar, who had been instrumental in bringing conservative speakers to the campus to balance a long parade of left-wingers, appeared before Deborah Sullivan, dean of Student Judicial Affairs, to respond to trumped-up charges that he had sent a threatening e-mail to a liberal activist and that he had “assaulted” another student who had confronted him.

Dean Sullivan acknowledged that she could not prove the claim of a threatening e-mail, so she would impose sanctions on the Arab-American student for the “assault” complaint.

Background: The so-called threatening e-mail was the result of someone who had hacked his way into Shahbandar’s e-mail. Six affidavits plus a videotape conclusively showed that at the time the e-mail was sent, the conservative student was on the air with a radio interview. The charge would have been laughed out of any court of law as baseless, but in the star chambers of the campus, it is simply a case of, “Well, we couldn’t prove it.”

The “assault” charge resulted from an incident where a student confronted Shahbandar in his office. As the conservative activist was shutting the door, the in-your-face student stuck his foot in the door to prevent it from closing. That is all it took for him to lodge what amounted to a “stop hitting my fist with your face” complaint.

Banned

As a result of the Nov. 27 meeting, Shahbandar is barred from attending any student government gatherings, even though they are open meetings at a public university.

He has been forcibly removed from his position of chief of staff to the activities vice president, Shanna Bowman. As reported here last week, Bowman has also been harassed for her part in bringing conservative speakers to the campus. She had to fight to beat back a leftist impeachment effort.

Dean Sullivan, who Shahbandar says had already strongly indicated she had made up her mind before her own inquiry went forward, informed the conservative activist that he is barred from any student government position for the remainder of his stay at ASU. He is scheduled to graduate in December 2003.


Most unfair of all, Shahbandar believes, is the decision to put him on “disciplinary probation.” That is no small matter, he said, because it “means they’re going to put this on my record.”

That permanent record would be available to any top-ranked graduate school or law school and would, of course, make it difficult for him to be accepted there. That amounts to a direct hit against his future.

He had intended to apply to law schools such as Stanford, Yale, Chicago and others. But with this “permanent blot” on his record, it will “hamper my ability to get education further than my B.A. degree at Arizona State,” he noted.

Time for Justice

“I am definitely going to take legal action,” Shahbandar told NewsMax.com. “I think there was gross injustice. My civil rights have been violated: Freedom of speech and my ability to attend open meetings” have been “stepped upon.”

Exactly what he will seek in any future lawsuit has not been determined. Removing the blot from his permanent record? At the very least. Beyond that, some form of compensation? That move is in play, but not definite.

Silence

An effort by NewsMax to get the university’s side of the story was met by a tight-lipped response from ASU Media Relations spokesman Keith Jennings. He said the law would not allow him to tell us anything.

“A disciplinary meeting in the dean’s office is private,” he said.

“Under federal law, we cannot comment publicly on disciplinary action taken by our Office of Student Life,” Jennings said. “He is free to say what he wants, but I’m restricted in what I can say.” He cited the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, passed in the 1960s, he believed, “and modified several times since then.”

“Basically [to the left] the ends justify the means,” Shahbandar told NewsMax. “If that means destroying someone’s life, well so be it, as long as the closed political environment the university currently maintains is not [disturbed].”

Daniel J. Flynn, executive director of Accuracy in Academia, told NewsMax he was unaware of any legal action taken by bullied conservative students that has reached the Supreme Court for a final ruling. This could be that ground-breaking case, though of course any college student going up against the deep pockets and sheer influence of Big Academia has to consider how his legal moves will be funded. That is a matter to which Shahbandar is giving considerable attention.

Flynn, in his recently released book, “Why the Left Hates America,” noted that after the terrorist attacks last year, “the vitriol against America was particularly harsh on campus. One confused undergraduate reacted to 9-11 by maintaining, ‘sometimes it is our fault,’ while another opined that ‘we had it coming.’ A professor in New Mexico told his students, ‘Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon would get my vote.’”

Although these are some of the most extreme examples, they serve to demonstrate the anti-American climate that prevails in many influential quarters of campus life, coupled with intolerance for those who dissent from leftist orthodoxy.

The speakers that Bowman and Shahbandar sought for appearances at ASU included David Horowitz, the former radical leftist turned conservative author of “Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery” and other works; Reginald Jones, the black entertainer/entrepreneur; Ann Coulter, author of “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right”; and Dinesh D’Souza, author of “Letters to a Young Conservative” and “What’s So Great About America,” among others.

Not the Right Kind of Minority

Shahbandar detects “a hint of racism” in the campaign against him. As an American of Arab descent, he says “the liberals just hate it when any minority stands up for the conservative cause, whether it’s an African-American or an Hispanic-American. They think of them as Uncle Toms, traitors.” It threatens their grip on the stereotype of conservatives as “racists” or “angry white males.”

“That makes them an even added threat" to the leftist establishment, the student said.

[Manu]

Given the evidence stated, he should sue. Let the courts work out the details, from an unbiased position.