My second of three posts for the Brandeis Center examines the use of “hate speech” policies on college and university campuses. Specifically, I want to focus on several cases in which these policies have been used to censor or punish students and faculty for expressing speech even mildly critical of Islam. These cases demonstrate that “hate speech” policies, even if well-intentioned, are selectively applied in favor of Islam. I’ll begin with a largely forgotten case that revolves around the story told in the video below, Portraits of Terror. The video tells the story of the artist, Joshua Stulman, whose exhibit of the same name was censored at Penn State University in 2006 by the university at the behest of two professors who claimed that the art violated Penn State’s policy against “hate speech.” The exhibit (all of which may be seen here) explores the promotion of terrorism and anti-Semitism in the Palestinian territories. One of the more jarring images, a portrait of a child wrapped in a suicide bomb, is based on real accounts of the recruitment of children to serve as suicide bombers both in the middle east and Pakistan. Stulman, who is Jewish, focuses on the origins of anti-Israeli terrorism and in a previous project had focused on the “appropriation” of Nazi imagery by Hamas and Hezbollah. For this, according to a lawsuit later filed by Stulman against Penn State University and the two professors who censored him, he was called into a meeting with his art professor, Robert Yarber, where he was told that he was a racist, that his art was racist and promoted Islamophobia, and that he “was calling all Arabs murderers and deliberately misleading uninformed university students to believe the idea that all Arabs are terrorists.” Perhaps in order to highlight the fierce political disagreement between Yarber and Stulman, Stulman’s complaint goes on to allege that Yarber also said that “Israel is a terrorist state” and that Israel had “no right to exist.” Indeed, The Daily Collegian, Penn State’s student newspaper, reported at the time that the university had justified canceling the exhibit by claiming that it “did not promote cultural diversity” or “opportunities for democratic dialogue,” and that another professor claimed it “did not mesh with the university’s educational mission.” While then-President of Penn State Graham Spanier very publicly overturned this decision, declaring “[t]hat exhibit is going to go up,” Stulman’s exhibit was never actually presented at Penn State. A later exhibition planned at Gratz College in Philadelphia was also canceled for fear of a violent response. As I point out in the video and in my book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, this was not the first time—nor is it likely to be the last time—a student faced censorship and/or punishment for speech critical of radical Islam or Islamic terrorism. Take, for example, another case at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in 2007, where members of the College Republicans who stomped on hand-drawn Hamas and Hezbollah flags during an anti-terrorism protest were brought up on charges of “incivility” by the campus judiciary. When San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders called SFSU to ask how it could be possible to punish the students when the Supreme Court has held that even burning an American flag is protected expression under the First Amendment, university spokesperson Ellen Griffin responded, “I don’t believe the complaint is about the desecration of the flag. I believe that the complaint is the desecration of Allah.” This response has always struck me as remarkable. It is the first time I can remember that a public university official tried to explain away a violation of the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment by violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The club ultimately prevailed in the campus judiciary and in a First Amendment lawsuit against the university. Meanwhile, that same year at Tufts University, a campus newspaper was punished for “harassment” for printing unflattering but largely verifiable facts about Islam during the school’s “Islamic Awareness Week.” For example, the paper’s piece pointed out that author Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding after writing The Satanic Verses, explained that all the countries that punish homosexuality by death are Islamic theocracies, and merely repeated unflattering quotes from the Koran. Tufts’ refusal to overturn this finding led to Tufts’ inclusion on FIRE’s “Red Alert” list of the worst campuses in America for free speech, on which it remains to this day. In 2009, Yale University intervened to prevent the publication of the infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons in a book specifically about those cartoons. The book entitled, The Cartoons That Shook the World, was slated to be published by Yale University Press until the university itself intervened. After submitting the cartoons out of context to a group of anonymous consultants, Yale University decided to remove not only the cartoons but also any image of Mohammed from the book. This decision was made despite the fact that author Jytte Klausen had agreed to publish her book through Yale University Press with the explicit understanding that her book about the cartoons had to include the cartoons that were being discussed. Klausen characterized herself as “stunned” following Yale’s decision, and she wasn’t alone. A storm of criticism followed from all corners: Yale was blasted in an open letter signed by FIRE, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Association of University Professors, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Middle East Studies Association, and others. The letter pointed out that “the failure to stand up for free expression emboldens those who would attack and undermine it.” Yet, Yale University defends its decision to censor the book to this day. These cases provide compelling examples of how students can get themselves in trouble for expressing viewpoints critical of Islam in the one place that is supposed to enthusiastically welcome important debates: our colleges and universities. It’s also a tale of how, regardless of their good intentions, “hate speech” rules can be selectively used as a political cudgel to silence speech administrators and faculty dislike. Parts of this post originally appeared on FIRE’s blog The Torch.