Boston College has decided to censor my debate with its star professor Alan Wolfe. After promising for months that the debate would be posted on its website, the college has decided not to air it. Moreover, Wolfe has denied permission for Boston College to make the video available to anyone. It's a strange story, and I was on the Hannity & Colmes show Friday night to discuss it. Basically the whole thing started when the editors of the New York Times Book Review decided to commission a hit job on my book The Enemy at Home. Their selected intellectual assassin was Alan Wolfe, who heads the Boisi Center for Religion at Boston College. Wolfe was only too happy to oblige, and he pulled out all the stops, calling me a "childish thinker" and my book a "national disgrace."
Whoopdee do, and who cares.
I mean, I am used to these kind of jejune accusations. But Wolfe went beyond the usual invective and called me a Bin Laden suitor. He suggested that I admire the Islamic terrorists, and implied that I agreed with them that America was a terrible place that should be attacked. I am an immigrant and a patriot, one of my recent books is titled What's So Great About America, and this year I got a patriot of the year award from a Midwest chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Naturally I was outraged that Wolfe had lied so blatantly about me and my book in an influential national newspaper.
When students at Boston College asked me to come and speak, I recalled that this was the institution where Wolfe teaches. So I asked the students to invite Wolfe to debate me, and to my delight, he agreed. Although I would be debating on Wolfe's home turf, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to confront him and call him on his outlandish accusations. We debated in April before a full auditorium. Prior to the debate, the media arm of Boston College--which calls itself Front Row--asked us to the participants to give permission for the debate to be taped for the school's website. We readily consented. But alas, the debate didn't go the way that Boston College envisioned.
First, I challenged Wolfe to substantiate his extreme charges against me. Not only had he suggested I was a Bin Laden disciple, but in the debate itself he claimed I support sharia law in the United States and that I want America to ally with people who deny the Holocaust. I demanded that he back up these claims, and he couldn't substantiate a single one. He didn't even try. At one point he said that what he wrote must be true because otherwise the New York Times wouldn't have printed it. Even the liberals in the audience found this laughable. So Wolfe's failure to support his outrageous charges exposed him as an irresponsible slanderer.
Second, I had the opportunity before his own students and colleagues to explore Wolfe's knowledge of Islam. During the cross-examination, I asked Wolfe a series of simple questions about the Muslim world. What percentage of Muslims around the globe live in a democracy? He had no idea. Which is the largest Muslim country in the world? He answered, "India," which is not a Muslim country at all. (The correct answer is Indonesia, which also happens to be a democracy.) I then asked him to name the world's second largest Muslim democracy? Once again Wolfe ventured, "India?" (The correct answer is Bangladesh.) And on it went. I looked into the audience and saw many students, including Wolfe's fans, with their mouths open. They couldn't believe that one of their college's most distinguished professors had been exposed as a complete ignoramus. Remember that this is a fellow who heads the religion center at Boston College.
Even two weeks after the debate, nothing was posted on the Boston College website. And when the student organizers inquired, school officials said they had quite a backlog and gave their assurance the debate would be aired in a couple of months. Now they have decided not to show it at all. Wolfe, of course, could easily give his permission for Front Row to release to the tape, in which case I will be happy to post it unedited on my website and link to it on this blog. But Wolfe has refused to give his consent. This way Wolfe can prevent the world from discovering how ignorant and irresponsible he is. And by colluding with him, officials at Boston College can prevent parents and others from seeing that their intellectual emperor has no clothes.
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clqpywazzu at 10:40AM on Jan 24th 2009
2. quote from ABOVE:
"I demanded that he back up these claims, and he couldn't substantiate a single one. He didn't even try. At one point he said that what he wrote must be true because otherwise the New York Times wouldn't have printed it. Even the liberals in the audience found this laughable..."
And this is WHY Dorothy L. Sayers (the great 20th Century scholar & Renaissance woman) said one of the "Lost Tools of Learning" is training in logical thinking & argument.
Wolfe LOST!!!
vikingmother at 7:21AM on Aug 27th 2007
3. Like Mr. Wolfe, most so called "intellectuals" are ignoramus! They only read and rely on what each other and the NY Times write. What a bunch of loosers! It is time that people like Dinesh show them up to the world, and expose them to the ridicule they deserve. Good Job Mr. Dinesh D'Souza and God bless you.
Carlos Garcia at 8:18AM on Aug 27th 2007
4.
Bravo for D'Souza! And shame on BC for squelching the debate. As an Irish/American Bostonian I was brought up to revere BC. We were told BC was a bastion of truth and learning; a place where working class students could be educated to become learned, moral Catholics.
Either we were mislead or BC has sunk to the depths of hypocracy and political correctness exemplified by this sorry episode.
O Tempora; O Mores!
Chas Conners at 8:22AM on Aug 27th 2007
5. Sounds like, it was an interesting debate. Two morons having it out over which one was dumber.
gshort3011 at 8:27AM on Aug 27th 2007
6. The Ayatollah D'Souza whines: "Basically the whole thing started when the editors of the New York Times Book Review decided to commission a hit job on my book The Enemy at Home. Their selected intellectual assassin was Alan Wolfe..."
Translation: The New York Times and Alan Wolfe disagree with Dinesh D'Souza. All the rest of the above blather is D'Souza's wingnut paranoia at full tilt.
As for the debate itself, we have only Dinesh's word on what transpired, and as regular readers of this blog know, the Ayatollah D'Souza cannot be trusted even when he isn't consciously attempting to tell a lie. Thus, Dinesh recently referred to the Second World War as "The Great War," which was of course the name of FIRST World War, and before that he referred to B-52s dropping the atomic bomb on Japan -- years before the first B-52 ever took to the air. So we have no way of knowing if Wolfe indeed actually referred to Dinesh as a "disciple" of Bin Laden.
But we know for a fact is that D'Souza has openly expressed sympathy for Bin Laden's fascist attiutudes. The opening words of "The Enemy at Home" include the following: "Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage —SOME OF IT BASED ON LEGITIMATE CONCERNS..." (My emphasis). Then too, while pimping his book on TV, Dinesh had the following exchange with Stephen:
Colbert: You agree with some of the things these radical extremists are against in America. Do you agree with that statement?
D'Souza: I agree with it.
So, all right, maybe "disciple" of Bin Laden isn't quite the word -- After all, D'Souza was a racist homophobe long before Bin Laden came on the scene. But the Ayatollah D'Souza is cetainly a fellow traveller of the murderers of 9/11. Dinesh might not want the full sharia code to apply here -- that would among other things require the real life execution of Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham and other right-wing women D'Souza slept with before marriage in the days when liberal cultural values suited him just fine. But D'Souza clearly favors sharia-lite -- a male-dominated society that oppresses gays.
In short, the basic substance of Wolfe's argument is correct -- D'Souza is ideologically sympathetic to the men who murdered three thousand Americans on September 11, 2001. In short, Dinesh is scum.
And you don't have to be liberal to think so. Some of the harshest critics of D'Souza's fascist friendly "The Enemy At Home" are from the right. Here's what they had to say about him at the National Review, hardly Victor Navasky's favorite publication: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjVjYjQzY2FkOWQyZDhkZTJjZWQyMzkzYWUxYThlOWI=
D'Souza responded to this criticism just as he responds to Wolfe above -- basically, by beating his breast and wetting his pants. Like all thugs, D'Souza thinks there is no greater injustice in the world than when his victims fight back.
Richter at 8:43AM on Aug 27th 2007
7. why not y'all just go to the biker bar at happy hour, pass the hat, then arm wrestle (best two out of three, winner takes all) to settle it. No doubt someone would capture it on their camera phone--then the proof would be all over the web for all to see.
just sayin.
michael white at 8:48AM on Aug 27th 2007
8. RICHTER is correct in stating that we cannot take anything DD says at face value, nor believe his version of any series of events. I have heard him lie many times on TV interviews, and blatantly misstate facts, just to make his point.
He stated most recently that West Indian blacks are darker than US blacks, so that he could fit this phenomenon into a cute little socioeconomic model he was working on. DD would be hard to take in the entertainment world, but as an "intellectual"???? DD is just another thing wrong with the world.
stuart joshua at 9:04AM on Aug 27th 2007
9. That's Outrageous!!!!! If I were a parent of a child attending BC I would be very concerned right now. I would also have a huge doubt in my mind about whether ANY of the professors are fit to be teaching. Dinesh, I bet you uncovered a lot more information about Wolfe's knowledge than you Ever Imagined!!?? Sheesh, and to think I wondered about BC for my little ones in the future..... sad, because I grew up right next door to BC too Chas Connors.
me at 9:01AM on Aug 27th 2007
10. "Whoopdee do, who cares?" Hmm, obviously YOU do. Poor baby!
web jones at 9:47AM on Aug 27th 2007
11. Here's more conservative scorn for "the moral vileness of much of what D’Souza writes." This time it comes via Powerline -- that's right, the same ultra-conservatives who used to blog here alongside the Ayatollah D'Souza. It makes for great reading. Note the quoting of Richard Pipes, who mocks D'Souza for screwing up a basic fact regarding Muslims in India -- the very topic D'Souza lords over Wolfe above.
Enjoy:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/03/016764.php
Again, we see that contempt for D'Souza's schoolgirl crush on Bin Laden crosses the entire spectrum of American political thinking. Against this, D'Souza's D.A.R. kitsch doesn't count for much.
Richter at 9:51AM on Aug 27th 2007
12. I'll debate you...Geo
Geo at 10:35AM on Aug 27th 2007
13. With this obvious censorship, it seems BC is showing its stalinist side.
It is important to keep in mind that "liberal" does not mean tolerant or fair minded.
Ken Berg at 10:51AM on Aug 27th 2007
14. WOW
The battle of dumb and dumber
No winner there
george at 11:27AM on Aug 27th 2007
15. Liberal the word might not mean it but their policies do
george at 11:30AM on Aug 27th 2007