In an open letter to Brandeis University president Fred Lawrence, Robert Snider, an attorney and Jewish activist, called for president Lawrence to resign from his position following his decision to revoke the honorary degree offer from women's rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

April 14, 2014

Frederick Lawrence, President

Brandeis University

415 South Street

Waltham, Massachusetts 02453

RE: Withdrawal of Invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Open Letter

Dear President Lawrence;

Why would a busy person who did not attend Brandeis take the time and make the effort to write to you concerning your withdrawal of your invitation on behalf of Brandeis to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to accept an honorary degree and speak at your 2014 graduation ceremony? Because I am appalled that the president of Brandeis University, which is representative of American Jewry, and attorney with experience in civil rights, failed to appreciate the critical importance of the issues presented, failed to defend fundamental values of the United States and acted with such cowardice. Your action was reprehensible on a number of levels and must be described to you and to the public.

All of us who received a liberal education and revere the fundamental freedoms bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers; freedoms that have been retained and fought for at the cost of many lives, are motivated to protect and pass down what we know is precious and relatively rare in history. For those of us who are Jewish and knowledgeable of Jewish history, we act to protect those rights in the cold realism that the lives of our children and Nation depend upon the survival of those fundamental rights. A president of a liberal arts university must be familiar sufficiently with history and with political science to appreciate that critical to the survival of our rights is an appreciation of the importance of free expression in the broadest sense. Academia has the function of educating generations about the values that makes the U.S. great while revealing the flaws and bigotry of political correctness and the dangers of utopian creeds. Indeed, one of the first acts of tyrants and fascists is to destroy freedom of expression in all of its forms, to attempt to control thought and to ban dissenters from the public square in all its forms.

That the campaign against Ms. Ali was to keep her from speaking at all and not just to engage in a civil debate in an effort to point out her failings is significant; indicating that the motives of those who oppose her are extreme and inconsistent with the “core values” of the United States Constitution. Indeed, your failure to recognize that there is an alliance presently between the far Left in the United States and radical Islam represented by CAIR, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which regards Ms. Ali as its mortal enemy, combines political naiveté with your reluctance to stand up for the right of free expression.

In the recent past Brandeis appears to have understood that mission. In 2010, when there were objections from some at Brandeis to the invitation to Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., to speak at graduation, Andrew Gully, Brandeis’ senior V.P. of communications made the obvious point that,

“We believe all Brandeis graduates support free speech, and that especially includes speech by those with whom they most strongly disagree. All speakers at Brandeis are entitled to a respectful hearing, regardless of any of our personal feelings about their views.” Indeed, in the past speakers were invited and were not disinvited who are anathema to Zionists and to conservatives. What is different about the graduating class of 2014?

Ms. Ali is a courageous advocate for the rights of women throughout the world and, in particular, in the Muslim world. She summarized her views nicely in her article published in the Wall Street Journal on April 11, 2014 entitled, Here’s What I Would Have Said at Brandeis. Manifestly, you seem to believe that Ms. Ali’s defense of young girls and her campaign against sexual violence is too radical and of so little social value that your graduates need protection from her ideas.

Your statement issued to the press is instructive and compounded the rudeness of your action. You alleged that,”…we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” Further, you represented that, “…we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.” Besides the fact that you appear to confess to having failed to do your homework prior to tendering the invitation, you fail to express just which of Ms. Ali’s statements you are referring to nor which of Brandeis’ “core values” you allege Ms. Ali violated. Evidently, free expression is not one of Brandeis’ “core values” along with advocacy for the right of women to be free of misogyny nor the right of preadolescent girls to be free from being married without their consent to older men. Your statement is a poor excuse for the fact that you did not have the courage or the intellectual understanding and lawyerly skill to stand up for the Constitution and against far leftist faculty, or for Judeo-Christian values. The least you can do now is to submit to public interviews by the parts of the media that disagree with you so that you may explain yourself.

Unfortunately, your rude action reveals that not only are you unfit to be President of Brandeis but there is a significant portion of Brandeis faculty who are also unfit to be educating students to be American citizens. I hope that there are those in the Brandeis community who will take the required action to return Brandeis University to its proper role in America.

Very truly yours,

(Robert Snider)