Breaking New Ground in Interfaith Dialogue
The NewGround project is as controversial as it is ambitious (“It’s Not Just Talk,” Aug. 2). Although I am skeptical as to its potential success, I believe the focus of the Jewish-Muslim dialogue is myopic. Since 9/11, it has become increasingly obvious that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a symptomatic and symbolic flashpoint of a problem of much greater universal dimensions. The thoughts of non-Palestinian Muslims about Israel in the NewGround dialogue clearly demonstrate that the war with Israel is not as territorial as it is religious. Perhaps the dialogue should be expanded to include Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Baha’i and Zoroastrians, who in the present day find themselves in conflict with expansionist Islam.
This young generation of American Muslims must be challenged as to whether they subscribe to the expansionist Jihadist Islam that wants to Islamize and subjugate the entire world. If they truly do not, then perhaps they could potentially be a catalyst for reform in the Islamic world that is long overdue.
Richard Friedman
Los Angeles
Hats off to writer Jonah Lowenfeld and the Jewish Journal for their recent article. Interfaith dialogue, like intercultural, interracial and inter-political dialogues, are always a difficult minefield for groups to make their way through.
My big fear is that the resistant older guard Jewish and Muslim leadership — and its concomitant stubborn resistance in the general older Jewish and Muslim public — is going to make the vital and necessary work of groups like NewGround extremely hard.
Older critics of NewGround and similar groups need to not sit on the fence, nursing old wounds. Instead, they should give full-throated support. To do otherwise is to only prolong the problem, and that won’t help anyone.
Brian Estwick
Los Angeles
U.S. Universities Open Learning Environments?
As a student at an openly liberal-leaning college, I have spoken frankly with professors as to whether our courses provide an open space for dissenting opinions or serve merely to reinforce opinions students already hold. What those conversations had was nuance, and an understanding that an idea can be presented — and even argued for by the professor — without being indoctrination. Isn’t that how we learn to think critically about an idea? Dennis Prager, on the other hand, presents woefully oversimplified versions of ideas that are admittedly often present in college courses and offers what amounts to an attempt to scare parents who are understandably concerned about the rising cost of college. It is irresponsible to say that a college education’s value is invalidated by the presence of liberal professors or controversial ideas. Give students a little credit — we’re impressionable, not stupid.
Noah Scheindlin
Los Angeles
Dennis Prager responds:
Mr. Scheindlin’s first sentence proves my point. He acknowledges that he is “a student at an openly liberal-leaning college.”
He also admits that all the left-wing propositions I ascribed to American universities “are admittedly often present in college courses.”
So where do we differ? Clearly not on my overall thesis that the American university has become a left-wing seminary.
We differ on whether the left-wing curriculum of the American university matters. He thinks it doesn’t. I think it does.
Mr. Scheindlin then equates “controversial ideas,” with liberal ones. I would like him to name one liberal idea — just one among the dozens I listed in my column, for example — that would be controversial at his or any other university. The only controversial ideas at American universities today are conservative: God is necessary for objective morality; capitalism is the finest system for conquering poverty; some murderers should be executed; Islamism is the greatest threat to world peace today. It would be surprising if Mr. Scheindlin had one professor who espoused even one of those ideas.
And for those still needing proof that our universities are left-wing seminaries, how’s this: The ratio of identifiably left-wing to identifiably right-wing commencement speakers at America’s colleges in 2013 was about a hundred to one. Among the commencement speakers at the various University of California campuses this year were Attorney General Eric Holder; Gov. Jerry Brown; green activist Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins; ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero; Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.); and Hilda Solis, secretary of labor in the Obama administration; among many other lesser-known liberal activists. There was not one identifiable conservative.
Correction
A column about the writer Joshuah Bearman (“Hard Road to Hollywood,” Aug. 2) incorrectly stated his relationship to his brother Ethan. Both Bearmans share the same parents.
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