Cindy Sheehan And "For The Honor Of Old Purdue"? Not Quite.

[maggiegault]

So Cindy Sheehan made a speech recently at my alma mater, Purdue University. Purdue is located in northern Indiana, and despite a surprising amount of liberalism, it is by and large the reddest of the red.

Not surprisingly, there was massive controversy. Colin Powell and Dick Lugar both spoke there, no real problems. Let Cindy Sheehan come to town and it's all of these heartless bastards coming out of the woodwork writing highly illiterate angry letters to the editor, calling her basically everything but a dirty whore.

Then I found this gem, written by, scarily enough, a "professor of biology," David Bridges:

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/OPINION03/704070312/-1/ARCHIVE

Purdue supporting hate speech sends wrong message
By DAVID BRIDGES

For the Journal & Courier

There are a very large number of people on and off the Purdue University campus who are outraged by the fact that Cindy Sheehan has been invited to speak at there.

The instigator is Professor Harry Targ, whose political views are known to all, and who is coordinator and virtually the sole organizer of the Peace Studies Program.

The Peace Studies program is housed in the Department of Political Science (rent free?), and is widely perceived as a component of that department. The visit has been prominently advertised by Convocations and Purdue News under the Purdue name and colors, with the explicit statement that support has been provided by Convocations as well as by the Department of Political Science, the American Studies program and the Women's Studies program.

These programs, and the Peace Studies program (which is an accredited minor), are all administratively supported by the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts.

Students in the Peace Studies program are expected to attend activities organized by that program and to write papers about them. The various activities include videos and invited speakers such as Sheehan. There is no balance: All of the featured videos and speakers are heavily left-leaning and anti-American, with total suppression of any other point of view.

It has been said (originally by author David Horowitz) that the program is designed to indoctrinate students in the views that made Targ such a dedicated follower of the Marx-Engels line of Communism.

This is not a free speech issue. Sheehan makes her living capitalizing on her son's death, fraternizing with America's enemies such as Hugo Chavez and traveling to Fidel Castro's Cuba.

After her son's death, she received $250,000 in Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance plus sundry other sums paid to her by the Department of Defense. She received $100,000 for funeral expenses, yet left his grave unmarked for photo ops with magazines such as Vanity Fair.

Casey Sheehan re-enlisted in the Army just as the Iraq war began, knowing that his unit would be sent to Iraq. He was killed in action after volunteering as part of a Quick Reaction Force to rescue American troops. He died heroically, fighting for his country as many have done before him.

His "grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins" released an e-mail in August 2004 stating: "We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country, and our president, silently, with prayer and respect."

Now resources and facilities at Purdue are being provided to permit this enemy of the United States to spew her hateful rhetoric on Purdue's campus in a Purdue-sponsored event. What message are we sending to local mothers such as Patti Frist who have also lost their sons in the war?

This is bringing shame and disrepute on one of the finest universities in the nation -- if not the finest. Don't tell me that we don't know what she will say -- her speeches are available for anyone who wishes to research them.

In her book, Peace Mom, she admits she often contemplated going back in time to murder the infant George Bush to prevent the war. Purdue should not support or in any way be associated with that kind of hate speech.

Bridges, of West Lafayette, is a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University.

***********
Well, I just informed Purdue University that they will not see ONE THIN DIME of alumni money from me or my husband, or my sister and brother-in-law (we are all alumni) as long as such a closed-minded mouth-breathing hatred-spouting MORON is in their employ.

Then I located this gem, in the comments section of the article. Guess in order to spew the Bush doggerel, one must be a shady loser like the Dim Son himself. I SO want to learn from a professor that was officially reprimanded for stealing others' work:

Shame and disrepute on Purdue, indeed.

If David Bridges had any respect for Purdue he would have left it years ago.
He is the one who has brought shame and disrepute to Purdue for years.

Here's some of what is said in the proceedings for his debarment from National Institutes of Health funds.

I find that DHHS proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Dr.
Bridges' experimental work began during August of 1986 and that the
protocols and the published conclusions from Dr. Bridges' experiments
were derived from information reported in the draft manuscript. My
recommended decision to the Debarring Official that Dr. Bridges be
debarred for three years is based primarily upon my findings and
conclusions that Dr. Bridges:

o plagiarized privileged information from a draft manuscript sent
to him in confidence for peer review;

o failed to promptly decline to act as a peer reviewer, with the
possible effect of delaying the manuscript's publication;

o failed to make available to the grantee institution and to the
grantor agency adequate primary data related to the scientific research
in question;

o violated accepted standards of conduct for scientific research;

o violated standards of conduct applicable to principal
investigators on federally supported projects; and

o disregarded standards of conduct with which he was well familiar
in order to deceive others about the conduct of his experiments.

***************
Not one thin dime, Purdue. Not one thin dime.

[Breeze54]

1. Dr. Bridges sounds like a knuckle dragger.

Good find and good for you! Hit them where it counts...the wallet!

Cindy Sheehan is an "enemy of the United States"??

That guy, Bridges, is a liar and a whacko!

:kick: & Recommended!

[central scrutinizer]

2. not big on logical fallacies, is he?

you got your ad hominem attacks, your straw men, guilt by association, appeal to fear, false dichotomy, etc.

[bigscott]

3. As a Purdue Alum

this kind of thing is embarrassing. But this kind of controversy happens at universities across the country when controversial people are invited to speak. When I was a student at Purdue, Candidate for president Ronald Reagan showed up to give a speech and was met with students dressed as carrots, tomatoes, celery etc. We had voted Ronald Reagan the "Vegetable of the Month"

Professors like Dr Bridges should be drummed out of any university