John Stuart Mill Quotes
...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. John W. Parker and Son, 1859, p. 30.
He was announcing that a lecturer Kevin Barrett would not be fired from the University. Barrett had taken the position with his students that the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center could not have been done by a handful of terrorists and it must have done by or with the complicity and help of forces inside the United States government. There had been outrage throughout the country with demands by many politicians for his ouster. The University did not bend to the political pressure even in the case where there was such an outrageous and incorrect view.
While stating this and perhaps believing it, he still was the President of an autocracy where diversity was not tolerated at all. Religious police roamed the nation beating men whose beards were not long enough or women they believed improperly dressed, politicians who held diverse views were not allowed to run for the Parliament or even the Presidency, religious dissenters were executed for heresy.
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
She was dealing with a serious campus situation where an invited speaker, Chief of Police Kelly of New York City was prevented from giving his p resentation on the controversial “Stop and Frisk” rules by student protesters who opposed the practice. Brown’s tradition of hearing anyone on the campus regardless of point of view had been broken to the distress of most students, faculty and alumni.
John Stuart Mill, usually cited as J. S. Mill, was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
