Quick Takes: Professors Protest ‘Islamophobia’ in Campaign, Emory Grant Frozen, Scholars From Afghanistan Missing, Trying to ‘De-Nerdify’ MIT

MIT—just like everyone else?

So, MIT wants to become just like all other party schools-at least in image. The University of Chicago was worried about their nerdy image a few years ago. According to a newspaper article, someone at UC thought that their students spent too much time studying and not enough time playing. Imagine!

Now MIT.

I say, yay for the nerds. At least there are a couple of choices students have for nerdy schools (NSs).

There should be more NSs not fewer.

Steven S. Clark, PhD

http://stevensclark.typepad.com/bioscience_biz/

Steven S. Clark, UW Madison, at 8:25 am EDT on October 15, 2008

Islamophobia

How I hate this term — but in this case the term is applied correctly. Obama is not a secret Muslim sent by the Saudi establishment to conquer and enslave the West for Islam or whatever other nutty conspiracy theory out there about him.

There are valid reasons to be afraid (or at least wary of) of totalitarian and illiberal Islamic movements. There is nothing that a true liberal can find positive about Ikhwan, Hizb ul-Tahir, or the Iranian regime.

But at the same time, the fear the Obama is a secret Muslim is irrational, and is an actual “Islamophobia", as opposed to many incorrect uses of the term.

Assistant Professor, at 12:10 pm EDT on October 15, 2008

here’s your sign

Labyrinth:

Your use of quotation marks around professors and religion of peace suggest to me that 1) you are not a professor, and are for some reason resentful of the fact that we even exist, and 2) you are one of the idiots the petition is designed to address.

This campaign season has been amazingly dominated by the mindless, shameful abuse of religious stereotypes. The use of Obama’s middle name as if it is a swear word, the insistence that he supported a “terrorist” who happened to have won Chicago’s citizen of the year award, the vicious rumors that he is a closet Muslim (and implication that being a Muslim means being a terrorist)... these are evidence that the saddest side of American society still lives on.

Now, Labyrinth, feel free to tell me something along the lines of “America, love it or leave it,” but in my view, you are the one who has somehow missed the last 50 years of social progress and thus have not been a part of the real America for a long time.

QuakerProf, at 6:25 pm EDT on October 15, 2008