Handing the name of your university’s sports venues over to the local biotech, banking, or fried chicken establishment in exchange for money – making your university one humongous advertising vector – is, well, pathetic, but so what. There’s only so much whining we’re going to do here about the corporatization of the university. And after all this is a capitalist culture, and the university reflects that culture, blah blah.

To be sure, things get a little dicier when you’re stuck with the Kenneth Lay Chair in Economics, or even the Lloyd Blankfein Professor of History.

The University of Miami had the Nevin Shapiro Student Athlete Lounge, etc. Many universities have dealt (some of them, like Seton Hall, repeatedly) with the embarrassment of questionable names on rooms, buildings and arenas, on academic chairs, on programs, on honorary degrees, on whatever.

But it’s one thing to deal with the consequences of honoring over-zealous capitalists; it’s another to honor authoritarian regimes whose fundamental political identity is outrageously at odds with the values of American universities.

A National Review writer notes that Harvard has a Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations:

The Sultan of Oman shackles his nation’s media with one of the most restrictive press laws in the Arab world, and Freedom House rates the sultanate, on a scale of 1 (freest) to 7 (least free), a 5.5, making it “unfree.”

Then there’s the Saudis:

In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz gave $20 million to both Harvard University and Georgetown University to establish centers for Islamic studies. At Georgetown, the prince’s gift funds the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the university’s vaunted School of Foreign Service. Saudi Arabia may be an American ally in the Middle East, but it is also one of the most repressive nations in the world. Leaving aside Saudi Arabia’s gross violations of the rights of all its citizens, the royal family doesn’t appear to have any more than an academic interest in “Muslim-Christian understanding”: The kingdom lacks even one Christian church.

The atrium of American University’s School of International Studies is named after the crown prince of Bahrain, another scandalously repressive country.

So I guess the point the NRO guy is making is that it’s hypocritical at best and a betrayal of fundamental values at worst when a university takes immense cash from authoritarian regimes and in exchange glorifies the names of those regimes. (Some British universities were, most recently, willing to do this with Gaddafi’s Libya.) The basic deal involves the university using its clean reputation to help cleanse not very sweet-smelling political units. And of course the deal can evolve into the university gradually incorporating nice thoughts about these units into their curricula; or let’s say overlooking some less than pleasant aspects of those regimes (Women in Saudi Arabia? You say there are women in Saudi Arabia? I didn’t see any when I was there…).

Students at Syria’s Aleppo University are being killed for protesting against the government.

France’s socialist presidential candidate says that, if elected, he won’t seek to overturn a law banning face-covering Muslim veils enacted by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives.

From an interview with Brishkay Ahmed, who made the documentary film Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan.

“The older people my father’s age or the experts I interviewed, oh my God, they’re dying to get rid of this cloth. Over and over they make that statement.”

Ahmed supports women’s choice to dress modestly and wear the hijab to cover their hair, but she believes the burqa should be banned everywhere.

“I have never met a woman in Afghanistan who has said she has worn the burqa because she likes it – never,” Ahmed said. “The fear associated with it is why it’s still hanging in the closet because [women] have been killed for not wearing it… The entire world needs to ban the burqa and I’m not scared about saying this and there is one reason: I’m a filmmaker and I’m not supposed to be politically correct. It’s not my job,” Ahmed said.

The moving memorial ceremony for Christopher Hitchens reminds me to link to his defense of burqa bans.

In the Vancouver Weekly, a writer reviews a new film about the burqa.

“It’s like saying, ‘I don’t like Pollock because he splattered paint,’” said Nina Rappaport, chairwoman of Docomomo-New York/Tri-State, an organization that promotes the preservation of Modernist architecture. “Does that mean we shouldn’t put it in a museum? No, it means we teach people about these things.”

Actually, disliking a local Brutalist building and wanting it demolished – see this New York Times article about townspeople in upstate New York interested in getting rid of a Paul Rudolph thing – is nothing like that. When you’re in the mood, you visit a Pollack painting in a museum. You don’t live or work in a Pollack painting. You don’t look at it every day whether you want to or not.

You don’t get to say I’m thrilled to have a job working for the city of Boston, but I’m going to work in a building I prefer.

It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work for the FBI, but I’ll be moving into a space in the Old Post Office, thanks.

No, people feel strongly about architecture because it’s ubiquitous, inescapable, having profound quotidian impact.

Nina Rappaport can teach ’til she’s blue in the facade, but it turns out that no one likes to be brutalized.

You become a paranoid police state.

Chicago State University – graduation rate barely above ten percent – has just issued an email to its faculty:

In an email sent March 22 to faculty and staff, Sabrina Land, the university’s director of marketing and communications, wrote that all communications must be “strategically deployed” in a way that “safeguards the reputation, work product and ultimately, the students, of CSU.”

The policy applies to media interviews, opinion pieces, newsletters, social media and other types of communications, stating that they must be approved by the university’s division of public relations. “All disclosures to the media will be communicated by an authorized CSU media relations officer or designate,” the policy says.

Failure to follow the rules “will be treated as serious and will result in disciplinary action, possible termination and could give rise to civil and/or criminal liability on the part of the employee.”

Shades of North Korea.

*****************************

Update: Chicago State decides it doesn’t want to be North Korea.

The bravest woman in Afghanistan speaks.

In Harper’s, the political scientist Benjamin Barber called [Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind] “a most enticing, a most subtle, a most learned, a most dangerous tract.”

This would be the Benjamin Barber most enticed by the most subtle, most learned, Muammar Qaddafi.

The Barber who wrote countless opinion pieces praising Qaddafi, a man he called “a poet of democracy.”

… here, at Boing Boing.

For your blogger’s small role in this tale, type Righthaven into her search engine.

Well, there you go. You can’t get a better, more graphic instance of the threat to free thought in universities than that. Tunisia’s Manouba University, where the flag switch took place, is on the front lines of the university’s defense, and its women students – threatened, as usual, most severely – seem to be leading the fight (see the photograph accompanying the article to which I’ve linked). The Salafists note that university women get to wear niqabs/burqas (both face-covering clothing) in other countries:

“We demand a prayer room and access for all students wearing the niqab to classes and exams, as is allowed in the United States, Britain and Germany,” said Mohammed Bakhti, a spokesman for the Salafi students.

He is too modest. His group also demands gender segregated classrooms. And gender segregated instruction… And it’s funny… Tunisia… strong links to France, and yet he doesn’t list France. Because burqas are illegal in France. They will probably be banned this year in Italy. Canada has begun partial bans, as has Sweden. Spain looks close to a ban.

By the way, there are plenty of schools in Britain that ban the burqa. A Norwegian professor has banned the burqa in his classrooms. The beat goes on.

Righthaven, which sued your blogger (search RIGHTHAVEN on this blog), has been dying by inches for more than a year. Now a judge has killed it off entirely, having taken away all of its copyrights (Righthaven was a copyright troll) in an effort to collect on some of the outfit’s many debts.

The only question left to old UD, as this post’s headline suggests, is whether she wants to try recovering damages.

The defendants may go after the Review-Journal, the Denver Post and Righthaven’s investors — [attorney Steve] Gibson and the owner of the Review-Journal — since Righthaven itself doesn’t seem to have any assets they can go after.

Lawyers and JPs will have to ask women wearing burqas to show their faces before witnessing their signatures under tough new laws in New South Wales.

Asking a woman to show her face for a moment so you can verify her identity? This is a “tough” new law?

UD‘s buddy Carl Elliott is one of the few writers eloquent and informed and tenacious enough to worry any and all corrupt corners of the American scientific establishment – inside and outside of universities.

William Heisel, at Reporting on Health, notes that Slate magazine has pulled a recent piece Carl wrote for them because one of the people mentioned in the piece hired a lawyer to write a letter threatening a defamation suit.

Today, Slate retracted a well-researched commentary by Dr. Carl Elliott about the ethical controversy surrounding Celltex Therapeutics, a company marketing unlicensed stem cell injections, and the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB).

Celltex recently hired the editor of AJOB, Glenn McGee, and other bioethicists have charged that McGee has been running the journal while working for Celltex. Following the criticism, McGee announced today that he has quit Celltex.

The company works in a medical and ethical gray area, harvesting adult stem cells from fat and injecting them into other parts of the body without solid evidence that the procedures work. Bioethicist Leigh Turner at the University of Minnesota has suggested that the company’s work looks exactly like something that would prompt action by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

Heisel’s post contains links to all of the relevant documents, articles, and letters. He points out that a libel suit, given McGee’s public profile, would be almost impossible to win; but, as this case demonstrates, the threat is sometimes enough to chill speech.

… talks about a professor at the University of Tromsø (the best Northern Lights YouTubes are from Tromsø) who has banned niqabs from his classrooms.

[The professor] quoted a parliamentary decision “that says a teacher may request to see the face of those who are taught. This is to do with covering the face, not hats or religious symbols.” [Okay, so he’s within his rights.]

The niqab covers a woman’s face apart from the eyes, and is most commonly worn in Arabian peninsula Arabic countries such as the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Whilst France introduced a ban on niqabs last year, Norway’s far-right Progress Party (FrP) has also suggested penalising women who wear these and burkas in public. [So only Norwegian reactionaries think this would be a good idea?]

Labour Party (Ap) deputy leader Helga Pedersen stated, “I’m against burkas and niqabs. We don’t want a society where people are concealed from top to toe.” [Ah. At least one Labor politician agrees.]

Professor Aarsæther’s policy has been greeted with a mixture of both conditional support and discouragement.

Senior Tromsø police station officer Morten Pettersen told Nordlys it is legal to wear niqabs in public but not during demonstrations, parades and the like. [And what of the parliamentary decision the professor cites?]

Leader of Tromsø’s Muslim community Alnor, Sandra Maryam Moe, finds it “disappointing that he [the professor] chooses to exclude someone for wearing a niqab. This is neither about a disciplinary, nor a behavioural problem.” [No – it is about a pedagogical problem. Like many people, he has serious difficulty interacting with a person whose face he can’t see.]

“I hope this is just a storm in a teacup. Norway is an open and inclusive country. One should accept the people who use the niqab here because they are so few in number, as well as let them make use of the opportunities they have in our society,” she said to NRK, doubting the lecturer’s claim that the niqab creates problems with student-teacher communication. [One of the opportunities women have in Norwegian society – as opposed to Saudi society – is that they can live a normal human life, on an equal footing with men. As a Norwegian, one should not accept the grotesque inhumanity of the burqa, even if its wearers are few in number.]

Government education officials [say] such a move is neutral and non-discriminatory, but Ole Petter Ottersen, Rector of the University of Oslo says they have no power to stop niqab-wearing students from attending lectures. [So which is it? Do professors have a right to see their students’ faces or not?]