Cognitive Dissonance at UC-Berkeley
First Harvard bans men from buildings to comply to Sharia law. Now Berkeley. The university that harasses US military recruiters on campus for their “don’t ask don’t tell policy” towards homosexuals is cutting a deal with a university in Saudi Arabia where the punishment for sodomy is the death penalty.
The University of California at Berkeley is set to receive $28 million and Stanford University $25 million under the five-year agreements with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), a graduate research university on the Red Sea expected to open in fall 2009 with a multi-billion dollar endowment.
...
A report from Berkeley’s Academic Senate addresses a number of questions along those lines posed by the Senate Task Force on University-Industry Partnerships. Pisano provided written answers, for instance, to questions on the commitment to coeducation at KAUST and the applicability of Saudi laws restricting sexual orientation. In Saudi Arabia, sodomy is punishable by death. In October, two men convicted of it were sentenced to 7,000 lashes each, according to Australia’s Herald Sun. Berkeley’s Academic Senate report, however, states that “Saudi laws related to sexual orientation and practice will not be applied at KAUST.”
Well that’s a relief. At least on campus gays won’t have to worry about being beaten to death by the Saudi religious police, the Mutaween.
Of course, once off campus all bets are off.
While women within the KAUST compound will have the opportunity to work and live their lives as they would in the West, once they leave the KAUST compound and residential area, they will be governed by current Saudi laws, which, for example, prohibit women from driving.
Those behind the deal have engaged in some serious cognitive dissonance to justify the abandonment of their ideals. Jean-Claude Latombe, the Kumagai Professor in the School of Engineering who helped negotiate the agreement stated, “When I was in Saudi Arabia a month ago, I read in a Saudi newspaper in English that it will probably be hard to forbid women to drive for much longer.” No word on when the death penalty for being gay will be overturned though.
It’s nice seeing that even the most devout Lefties are willing to sell out their beliefs for cold hard cash. I’d say that they had sold their souls, but since Lefties don’t believe in religion (at least the non-Islamic variety), they don’t have any.
Leave a comment