On Thursday, Oct. 16, the Conservative Union, a student group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hosted speaker Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Spencer, a scholar of Islam, spoke during the third center-initiated Islamofacist Awareness Week, Oct. 13-17 this year. His topic was “Islam: A Religion of Peace?”
Appearances by previous speakers hosted by the C.U., notably self-described former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat on Dec. 4, 2007, and center founder David Horowitz on April 30, 2008, resulted in angry verbal protests by and between Muslim and other students and concerns by the university and others for student and speaker security.
But Spencer’s speech last week was given and received calmly and without protest to an audience of 126 in UWM’s Bolton Hall.
With a capacity of more than 400, the auditorium was less than one-third full and there seemed to be few Jewish students in attendance. There appeared to be approximately 25 or 30 Muslim students present.
Though Spencer, a Christian of Middle Eastern descent, took many questions from the audience following his presentation, there was only one overtly hostile question, which he declined to answer. It concerned his views on gay rights and other unrelated topics.
Funding for Spencer’s speech, like others among the C.U.’s speakers, came from individuals in the Jewish community, according to C.U. president Tyler Kristopeit. This speech was mostly underwritten by one major donor who wishes to remain anonymous, he said.
This was confirmed by Ivan Lang of the Committee for Truth and Justice, a Jewish and Israel advocacy group comprised of 10 members, eight of whom are Jewish. The CTJ assisted the student group in connecting with the donor, Lang said.
While Spencer’s speech did not cause much visible controversy, opposing inflammatory ads in the UWM Post and confusion about the level and source of security prior to the event, as well as memories of last year’s protests, had raised concerns about it from several quarters.
In addition, Hillel Foundation Milwaukee executive director Heidi Rattner and other members of the community have intermittently expressed concern about the effect that such speakers have on UWM’s Jewish students.
“My biggest concern is that the outside community appears to be trying to interfere with students [by] bringing in speakers that are not designed to appeal to the educational needs of the large majority,” Rattner said in a telephone interview last week.
Students are not generally interested in hearing from people whom they perceive as extremists, such as many of those sponsored by the C.U., lecturing at them about subjects the students don’t know much about, she said.
The students feel that these speakers have an agenda — to bring listeners to their way of thinking — and students don’t want to be manipulated. “They would prefer to have such speakers appear on a panel or have more moderate speakers,” Rattner said.
Also, most UWM students are working 20-30 hours per week at the same time as taking full-time classes, Rattner said. So, they often don’t have or won’t make time for another lecture.
Other reasons Jewish students did not go to hear Spencer, Rattner speculated, included a conflict with a popular annual Sukkot social event, and a lack of publicity for the speech until the last minute.
Though The Chronicle was unable to find any Jewish students who attended Spencer’s speech, several UWM students spoke in telephone interviews about their feelings about the C.U.’s speakers, their contact with Muslim students and their sense of safety on campus.
Los Angeles native Jared Thompson, a junior majoring in communications with a Hebrew minor, said he attended the Horowitz speech last year and, though he knew about Spencer’s speech, he was not interested in attending because it was brought by the C.U.
Thompson said that he believes that the C.U. has an agenda to attack Muslims and that it is understandable that the Muslim students get angry when they are spoken about in a hostile way.
“Slamming [Muslims] is not going to solve any problems. That’s my biggest reason for staying away [from the Spencer speech] — I don’t want to be associated with slamming people,” Thompson said.
Also, because of hostilities he’s seen between Muslim and Jewish students on some West Coast campuses, and because Jews at UWM are such a minority compared to Muslim students, Thompson feels that an anti-Semitic atmosphere could develop as a result of these speeches.
“There are different ways to go about dealing with these things, he said. “I would prefer to talk with the Muslim students face-to-face.”
UWM senior Angie Rosenthal, an education major from St. Paul, said she has never felt intimidated or threatened by Muslim students. Quite the opposite, when she has staffed the Hillel Foundation table in the student union, Muslim students have interacted with her and her fellow Jewish students in a friendly way, she said.
But, Rosenthal admitted, though Hillel has tried to work with Muslim student organizations on joint programs, “they always seem to fall through.”
As for the speakers, Rosenthal said students “can tell when somebody’s trying to give information and when someone is trying to prosecute somebody and when the later occurs, the students stop listening.
“The C.U. tends to bring extreme speakers and it kind of worries me because [those speakers] bring out such fear in people and once people are scared that’s when the hate crimes start to happen.”
Rosenthal elaborated saying, “It’s like a reality TV show. If you push someone’s button long enough and hard enough, they’re going to snap. It kind of makes you wonder if this is what the conservatives are trying to do. Because, clearly, there have been problems in the past with people getting upset.”
Last year’s Hillel president Josh Onheiber, a senior from Madison majoring in criminal justice, said that he, too, has never felt any fear of Muslim students, nor have other Jewish students that he knows.
At the same time, he is disappointed and confused that the MSA has declined all of Hillel’s efforts to work with them on joint programs. That gives him a bad feeling, he said.
The MSA has been more open to Hillel in the past, he said, but has withdrawn in the last year and a half. He has not made a connection, he said, between the speakers and the cooling of relations with the MSA.
Onheiber said that he does not object to controversial speakers on campus as long as they are not “putting out untruths about one side” and as long as other speakers present other perspectives.
St. Paul native Jason Kipp, a junior majoring in architecture, has heard some of the C.U. sponsored speakers and he believes they “have a message that America needs to hear.
“[The message is], ‘Wake up and pay attention to what’s happening: There is an entire culture out there — Islamofascism, the jihadis, Hamas, and Hezbollah terrorists — that we don’t take seriously when they say they want to kill us.’”
Kipp did not attend Spencer’s presentation, but said the speakers he heard last year were clear about distinguishing Islamofascists from the remaining 85 or 90 percent of the Muslim world.
Still, he said, “the Muslim Student Association and leftist groups get very angry and scream and yell, and it has an effect because they bring speakers to counter.”
But the leftist speakers don’t attempt to refute the C.U. speakers, Kipp said. “They respond only with vulgarity and threats” and that leaves him no choice but to conclude that what [the C.U. speakers] say is true.
Spencer: Muslim supremacists pose a real threat. Click here to read more of Spencer’s comments.
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