Ridiculous Moral Equivalence - Brandeis Edition

I am not a fan of Mrs. Ferguson, nor of (neo-)liberal critiques of Islam in general, but this example is just too stunning to pass up.


Like all university campuses go, I am sure Brandeis could do a lot more to safeguard its female student population - returning to a vigorous regimen of pastoral care would go a long way to ameliorating these scourges of modern student life. But .  .  . to equate what happens on the leafy campus of Brandeis with "female genital cutting, forced marriages, and honor killings" is beyond absurd. What we are talking about is violence, not just "gendered" violence, but violence, pure and simple, violence on a scale not seen on the congested avenues of Waltham, Mass.

Give Hirsi Ali an honorary degree, or don't - there are plenty of reasons not to (starting with the whole absurdity of the trade in honorary doctorates). But don't fall into the trap of ridiculous first world moral equivalence.