The College Fix

An NYU professor asked students to “step into [a terrorist’s] shoes” and plan a hypothetical terrorist attack. Professor Marie-Helen Maras is asking students to write a 10-15 page paper detailing a plan to kill and destroy.

At a school that sits not far from Ground Zero, it’s a bit too much for some observers.

“Some of the most notorious terrorists, including Anwar al-Awlaki, got their start on American campuses. It looks like after the CIA killed al-Awlaki, NYU is helping to produce successors,” said one law-enforcement expert, according to Fox News.

Should we be outraged? On one hand, there’s nothing inherently wrong with planning hypothetical attacks. Indeed, I would assume this is something military and law enforcement professionals do all the time in and effort to anticipate what America’s enemies might do next.

On the other hand, our elite universities are famous for taking multiculturalism to such extremes that they privilege no cultural view over another, and for dismissing the dangers of radical Islam, it is no wonder that some would take offense to this kind of assignment. We’re naturally suspicious of academics because, in the name of academic freedom, some of them have made a habit of apologizing for terrorists and hobnobbing with tyrants: Like when Iranian president and holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to Columbia University, for example. Or when MIT’s Noam Chomsky loudly blamed America for 9/11.

For too long, the academic elite in this county have mistaken sympathy with evil for broad-mindedness. No wonder people are outraged when they hear about a professor asking students to plan a detailed terrorist attack. Liberal academics have worked hard to earn American’s distrust.

(Image: TheMachineStops / Flickr)

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