Patrick Farrell Quotes
We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas.
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.
Patrick Farrell, Provost, University of Wisconsin, Statement, July 10, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Licensing of the press is
This became a critically important quotation a half century after it was made. Judge Hand articulated the majority Western and Judeo-Christian value proposition between dissent and heresy. However, for the majority of the Islamic world, the reverse represents the majority value that is held. There is a minority in the West that agrees that avoidance of heresy is paramount and a minority of the Muslim world that agrees that the protection of dissent is the more important value, but the two civilizations were at odds in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. 600 years ago, the Christian world agreed with the Muslim society and prevention of heresy was the more important value. The Reformation and the enlightenment followed by the world example of America produced a transformation and this may occur in the majority of the Islamic world in time.
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.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Schlessinger had made derogatory remarks about homosexuals and her supporters claimed that she was entitled to freedom of speech.
Astronomy and physics were followed by chemistry and then geology and biology, and more recently we have genetics, in vitro fertilization and cloning.
Arguing agaist libel and sedition prosecutions:
