The fancy school, best known for Bill Gates and Paul Allen, invited author Dinesh D'Souza to speak about Iraq and foreign policy. After he had been invited (by the headmaster), he says that a group of teachers learned that his views were politically incorrect and began a campaign to have him disinvited — which succeeded. They feared, he says, that by inviting a colored, conservative immigrant from India they would sin against diversity. In our modern academy, that's a mortal sin, and so he was disinvited. (Though he will be paid for his non-appearance.)
If you are wondering why you haven't read this story in one of our local newspapers, that's because it most likely hasn't appeared in any of them. I can tell you that I didn't find an article on D'Souza's disinivitation when I searched news sources using Google. Somehow I don't think we would have the same silence if, for instance, an evangelical school had disinvited a prominent leftist speaker.
D'Souza has appeared on the Dori Monson show (twice), the Kirby Wilbur show, and the John Carlson show. Which shows why you need talk radio and, if I may say so, Sound Politics.
(You can read more about D'Souza at his site or in this Wikipedia article, and you can see him tonight on Hannity & Colmes.)
Posted by Jim Miller at January 24, 2006 03:10 PM | Email ThisIt's Seattle and King County. That's just the way they are there:
Liberal point of view = always good
Any other point of view = always bad
P.S. I think they're morons for doing it but remember, you guys think all things private are better than public and it's their private school. Enough said.
Posted by: westello on January 24, 2006 04:01 PMhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009379/
Posted by: My Left Foot on January 24, 2006 05:00 PMThey ( the teachers ) probably objected to Reagan being depicted as "...amiable".
Posted by: Rev. A.A. Tappman: Anabaptist on January 24, 2006 05:12 PMYou're an idiot, no-nutz. I suspect that you post here because to you bad attention is better than no attention at all. I further suspect that you have become accustomed to people abruptly turning and walking away from what you thought were conversations. I bet they still make you sit at the (other) little kids at Thanksgiving. That must be why you constantly subject yourself to derision and ridicule. I can't otherwise imagine why you would post such bone-jarringly stupid crap.
Are you mental?
Do the little voices tell you what to do?
Oh, and as to the article…….BFD!
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 24, 2006 05:43 PMYou severely over estimated the value or effect of your words. Derision and ridicule? In case you have not noticed, this is pretty much an anonymous blog. And thank you for proving the point of the MSNBC.com article. Your participation is greatly appreciated.
Posted by: My Left Foot on January 24, 2006 05:59 PM... my 2 cents.
Posted by: Regret on January 24, 2006 08:27 PMYes, it is a private school but Lakeside is extremely self-conscious--jumping at any opportunity to portray the school in a good light (recent attention has focused on dispelling the myth that it is only composed of weatlhy caucasian kids). They do respond to the public because Lakeside's mission is to make great educations available to anyone who can gain admission. They are in fact selling to rather large audience and cannot afford to offend conservatives at large and the conservatives amongst the alumni.
Letters are best directed to Bernie Noe (cc Bruce if you are an alum who donates) at 14050 1st Ave. NE, Seattle, WA, 98125.
Posted by: Nicholas Echelbarger on January 25, 2006 12:55 AMThen again, I went to public school, so I probably don't get it.
Posted by: Belltowner on January 25, 2006 01:05 AMIt isn't that they didn't have the right to invite or disinvite whomever they want to speak at various functions. We're talking about whether it was the right (as in proper, correct, wise, etc.) thing to do. There are various reasons, some of which have been noted in previous posts, why this was probably a bad move on the school's part. It makes them look bad. It makes them look like hypocrites. It makes the school administration appear weak in the face of typical liberal heavy-handed intimidation. It denies their student body the experience of hearing alternate points of view articulated in an academic setting. There are probably other reasons. The bottom line is the school has probably lost yardage by caving in to the demands of the fascist leftists instead of sticking by their (purported) principles of academic freedom.
Posted by: Interested Observer on January 25, 2006 05:26 AMMy wife and I were both amused and appalled at the yellow teeth Paul Allen proudly displayed to the world as he accepted the NFC Championship trophy on behalf of the Seahawks.
There are ways to fix that problem, man....starting with brushing your teeth!
Sorry for the off-topic post, but I couldn't help concurring with Org Man on matters of leftist hygienics.
Posted by: Saltherring on January 25, 2006 06:42 AMI thought both points so obvious that I did not mention them in the original post
.
To those commenters who have direct connections to Lakeside: Thanks for the additional information you have provided. (And, of course, if anyone now there wants to send more to me anonomously, they should feel free to do so.)
Posted by: Jim Miller on January 25, 2006 07:27 AMShe knew D'Souzza personally and the two of them thought Lakeside acted poorly. Susan did comment that the 10k speaker fee seemed high and that if she had kids at the school, she would have told the school to reduce tuition instead.
Also, D'Souza's speech was on Iraq and not his main lifework.
Posted by: swatter on January 25, 2006 08:36 AMIT PROVES THAT THE SEATTLE ELITE ARE "KLOWNING" A NEW GENERATION OF LIMO LIBS, BACK-PACKERS N' SLACKERS.
NOT TO MENTION ENOUGH BARISTA'S WITH THEIR POLITICAL SCIENCE & PHYC DEGREES FROM THE U -DUB TO KEEP STARBUCKS IN COFFEE ARTISAN'S UNTIL THE NEXT MILLINIUM.
Posted by: TACOMA PHLASH on January 25, 2006 10:25 AMWhat is "LAME" . . . the fact that liberals avoid facts,
substance, logic, and intellectual consistency, or the fact that Left hoof demonstrates it?
I and my multiracial children are conservatives in the Lakeside sea of liberalism, but we are not alone there. You can rest assured, that numbers of students and parents were dismayed at the disinvite and are letting headmaster Bernie and the Board know it.
The skinny from my vantage point: A number of students were led in revolt by a minority of faculty spouting half-truths and outright lies about Dinesh gleaned from the mirror image of blogs such as this one. The teachers believe they represent diversity and multiculturalism at the school. Unfortunately, they also believe that teaching diversity requires an in your face approach that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Dinesh, a lightweight with provocative opinions contrary to that approach, threatened them. The students now realize how foolish they were and how foolish it now makes their school appear. I think they have learned from this. I am not so sure that the headmaster has. I am certain that the objecting teachers have not. At least one of them had already chosen to leave Lakeside at the end of the year because she felt her personal diversity agenda was not being appreciated enough by either the student body or the administration. To be honest, I believe that the students at Lakeside preferred to celebrate the things that bring them together and didn't listen to the diatribe from the far left.
Posted by: Lakeside Parent on January 25, 2006 08:26 PMI and my multiracial children are conservatives in the Lakeside sea of liberalism, but we are not alone there. You can rest assured, that numbers of students and parents were dismayed at the disinvite and are letting headmaster Bernie and the Board know it.
The skinny from my vantage point: A number of students were led in revolt by a minority of faculty spouting half-truths and outright lies about Dinesh gleaned from the mirror image of blogs such as this one. The teachers believe they represent diversity and multiculturalism at the school. Unfortunately, they also believe that teaching diversity requires an in your face approach that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Dinesh, a lightweight with provocative opinions contrary to that approach, threatened them. The students now realize how foolish they were and how foolish it now makes their school appear. I think they have learned from this. I am not so sure that the headmaster has. I am certain that the objecting teachers have not. At least one of them had already chosen to leave Lakeside at the end of the year because she felt her personal diversity agenda was not being appreciated enough by either the student body or the administration. To be honest, I believe that the students at Lakeside preferred to celebrate the things that bring them together and didn't listen to the diatribe from the far left.
Posted by: Lakeside Parent on January 25, 2006 08:27 PMhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/257100_robert26.html
Posted by: Erik on January 26, 2006 11:42 AMCorrection: D'Souza was refering to a Reagan's critic, Clark Clifford, who called Reagan an "amiable dunce". D'Souza disagreed, and went on to praise Reagan as one of the world's greatest Presidents.
Posted by: Stuart Andrews on January 27, 2006 12:10 AMOn what do you make this assertion? Have you ever heard Mr. D'Souza? Can you point to anything that he has written that supports your contention that he is a "hack"?
Or is it because he holds an opposing point of view to yours?
More of that widely-touted "liberal tolerance" I suspect...
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 28, 2006 08:49 AM