Quote:
Originally Posted by Corkey
The whole thing comes down to:
free speech v.s. violent action.
In this country and perhaps no other that I know of one can say what they want as long as it doesn't harm physically another, i.e.: no yelling fire in a crowded theater type of thing.
In other countries such as our neighbor to the north hate speech is regulated where here it is not.
There was a young woman on Chris Matthews the other day who came from an Islamic country, who discussed the indoctrination of Islam in the early years of up bringing. She grew up immersed in the Koran. When she went to university she traveled and came to realize that other cultures had differing view points on religion and free speech. She (and I'm paraphrasing here) said that she sees a need for education of other cultures in Islam. How to get there: she and others she is working with are doing that education. I fully support her efforts.
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One of the things I appreciate, especially in Higher Education institutions, are efforts to diversify campus populations and incorporate curriculum involving other cultures. The university where I earned my masters degree is equipped with an International Student Affairs Office. I think most college/university campuses have these nowadays.
At the time I was earning my masters in Communication, the director and his assistant were also peers in my cohort. We worked on issues just like the interviewee spoke about on the Chris Matthews show. What many might not be completely in the know about is that the process is slow in building specialized curriculum at a higher ed institutional level. It's an intracate dance of power between governing agency and those who oversee the regulatory arm of education. To give an example of how arduous this process is, university settings must meet criteria in construction of curriculum by department and simultaneously, if possible, be able to meet funding requirements so that a class can be constructed within particular departments with a professor who is adept in creating syllabae designed specifically for this cultural education need. I was fortunate to attend to unversities in Oregon (a public one for my bachelors; a private one for my masters) where both universities had staff in strategic departments (sociology, communication, business and mathematics) who had professors who incorporated a deeper cultural understanding of these types of ideas expressed by the Chris Matthews' interviewee.
As of late, even though I graduated from my masters programme, it appears that International Studies is still a project that is not fully expanded enough in terms of cross-cultural studies, which I think is very important in an orchestrated attempt to not only meet a need for International students but to provide an education for those who do not fall under the rubric within International Studies. That's the unfortunate part of the process of higher education issues that most American universities face nowadays and certainly is deserving of a more focused attempt at creating access to this particular type of education, overall.