SFSU President Lynn Mahoney: Terrorist Leila Khaled’s Enabler

SFSU president Lynn Mahoney (left) has defended Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled’s (right, in 1969) Sept. 23 virtual classroom appearance at SFSU.

Lynn Mahoney, San Francisco State University’s president, enabled Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled’s September 23 virtual appearance at her school not because she fears controversy, but because she’s never met a radical cause she didn’t support. As Campus Watch demonstrates today at The American Spectator, Mahoney’s radicalism typifies that of contemporary university leaders:

Unrepentant Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled’s September 23 virtual appearance at San Francisco State University couldn’t have occurred without the steadfast support of Lynn Mahoney, SFSU’s far-left virtue-signaling president. After being canceled by Zoom and Facebook, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled” appeared on YouTube for 23 minutes before that platform, too, pulled the plug.

A leader more concerned about radicalizing students than supporting radical chic would have prevented Khaled’s appearance altogether. Faced with the greatest campus controversy since her July 2019 appointment as president, Mahoney might have leveraged her progressive bona fides to condemn terrorism and those who champion it. She might have taught her community why academic freedom demands respect for a diversity of opinion, something sorely lacking in academe, but not apologias for violence and murder issued by an active member of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

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Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.
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