Bloomberg to City Council: Back the F*ck Off!
Kate Taylor, a reporter for the New York Times, just tweeted these.
.@mikebloomberg forcefully defends right of Brooklyn College to organize BDS conference, while noting he’s a strong supporter of Israel.
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) February 6, 2013
Mayor: “If u want to go to a university where the govt decides what…subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply…in N Korea”
— Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) February 6, 2013
Update (12:10 pm)
According to a transcription of Bloomberg’s remarks that was prepared by Emily Stanback, this is the entire statement he made:
Well look, I couldn’t disagree more violently with BDS as they call it, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. As you know I’m a big supporter of Israel, as big a one as you can find in the city, but I could also not agree more strongly with an academic department’s right to sponsor a forum on any topic that they choose. I mean, if you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.
The last thing that we need is for members of our City Council or State Legislature to be micromanaging the kinds of programs that our public universities run, and base funding decisions on the political views of professors. I can’t think of anything that would be more destructive to a university and its students.
You know, the freedom to discuss ideas, including ideas that people find repugnant, lies really at the heart of the university system, and take that away and higher education in this country would certainly die.
This is a city that loves and protects freedom—academic freedom, religious religious freedom, sexual freedom, cultural freedom, political freedom. We are the freest city in the world, and that’s why we’re the greatest city in the world.
That’s a very strong endorsement of my department’s position.