GLENN BECK PROGRAM
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GLENN: I've told you for a while I don't believe that any society has ever gotten more tolerant. They just change targets. I read that quote, what, about two months ago? And I think it is the best quote I've heard in I don't know how long. No society has ever gotten more tolerant. They just change targets. Well, I've got two stories for you. One is from the conservatives down at the University of Florida, and I have the poster or the little flier they handed out. It just says radical Islam wants you dead. Obsession, movie. Radical Islam's war against the West. Screening at UF on Tuesday, November 13th at the Union movie theater, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sponsored by the college law school Republicans, and the Jewish law school association. For more information e-mail obsessionUF at gmail.com, okay? That's all it says. Well, the university went crazy because Muslims said they were afraid to be on campus because of this. This was creating a hostile environment for the Muslims on campus. Well, it shouldn't. You should be able to unite against radical Islam, but we have live in such a politically correct world that you can't say that. You can't say, hang on, which are the radical Islamists here? Which are the ones that want me dead and which are the ones that want to live side by side as a good neighbor. I'd like to know that, but we can't ask that question. We can't discuss it, which leaves us into a place to where you don't know how. That should cause fear and it should cause fear in the Muslim community as well as the non-Muslim community because I got news for you. If you're not Muslim enough, you're a target. In today's America if you're not Christian enough, you're a target. Let's stop with this stuff.

Well, the university issued a letter and demanded an apology from this student group. Well, now things have changed just a bit and one of the guys who helped make this change is on the phone with us. He is from the house of representatives. His name is Adam Hasner. He is down in Florida. Hello, Adam, how are you?

Original statement from the University of Florida No matter their original intent, the advertisements for the movie "Obsession" reinforced negative stereotypes and made many of UF's Muslim students feel unsafe. The e-mail to students was intended to promote civility, tolerance and diversity at a time when acts of hatred on college campuses such as the noose at Columbia University are making national headlines. Free speech is of paramount importance at the University of Florida. Students must have the opportunity to express themselves without fear and to debate difficult issues with their colleagues. It is an essential part of their education and their ability to develop critical thinking skills. However, students must also learn that debate is not healthy when it intimidates, frightens, or makes students feel that they are not safe on campus.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Great to be with you, Glenn. Thank you.

GLENN: Tell me how this came to your attention and what you did and what the outcome is.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Well, I've actually been part of a small group of people who have been showing Obsession around the state in order to help educate our population down here in Florida to the truth of radical Islam. Some of those campus groups up in Gainesville decided they wanted to participate and show the movie up there and they put out that flier and then after showing the movie, the vice president for student affairs sent out an e-mail essentially calling for them to apologize and saying that the Muslim students on campus were in fear of their safety and security. Right away I knew that that was going to have a chilling effect on free speech. I contacted the university president who unfortunately at the time sent me a letter essentially defending the vice president's comments and also declared that poster that said radical Islam wants you dead as inaccurate speech.

GLENN: Yeah, I think we got the same --

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Extremely troubling.

GLENN: I think we got the same letter because I got the same letter from the university President as well and I wanted to know what part was inaccurate.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: And that was my question to him because this is yet another incident that should wake us all up to what's happening on our college campuses.

GLENN: Yeah.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: And we need to realize that the moral and political and ideological relativism is paralyzing our country and certainly that it's taking place at University of Florida, the same place where we have the situation with the don't tase me and we have the situation with Alberto Gonzales and it was starting to seem that UF was becoming a hotbed for this type of activity.

GLENN: So how did he answer?

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Well, the university president initially defended the vice president of student affairs and I then responded back essentially telling them that by calling this statement inaccurate was grotesque and a denial of the fact that the truth is that radical Islam, as you stated, does want us dead.

GLENN: Yeah.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Along with my support, our state attorney general, Bill McCollum, former United States congressman has worked on this issue of radical Islam for many years joined in and he helped put a lot of pressure on the university over the course of the last several weeks and then just last week, at the end of last week the university actually issued a retraction in a sense that they are no longer calling for the students to apologize for putting up that flier and so they've tried to put this saga to bed but again, the fact that this took place in the first place is troubling and again another example of what's taking place on our college campuses.

GLENN: What makes you think that it won't happen again the next time, the minute you're not looking?

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Well, I'm going to continue to fight, and I know that there are other people out there but I think we've got to continue to educate people. I know you do it on your show all the time and we're trying to do it here in Florida. By showing the movie Obsession as well as other great documentaries that are out there. And we've got to make sure that we continue to put pressure on these universities to make sure that there is an open dialogue and not what the university wants, which is to shut down this type of free speech.

GLENN: Adam, I don't know if you saw what happened in Princeton, New Jersey this weekend. Did you see this?

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: I didn't.

GLENN: This is on the front page of the New York Sun. Can't find it any place else but it's on the front page of the New York Sun. Princeton nudge Dateline, Princeton university is rattling the campus heave after a student who is leading a movement to instill conservative moral values among undergraduates was physically attacked and beaten on Friday and rendered unconscious. A politics major from Texas who was a junior, Francisco Nova was assaulted two miles from the campus in Princeton Township by two black clad men who pinned him against the wall, repeatedly bashed his head against the bricks and told him to shut his mouth. They didn't steal anything or anything else. He is a morally conservative -- he's part of a morally conservative student group that speaks out against homosexuality, premarital sex. He has received death threats via e-mail. Three other leaders in this group have also received death threats and a professor at Princeton has received death threats. Let's see. The death threats include expletives addressed to the recipients each by their first name, threatened to destroy them and kill them. This weekend the victim's jaw was badly swollen, his face was covered with cuts and abrasions, the inside of his mouth was bleeding. With an active Republicans club, a pro life club, three major evangelical groups and the James Madison program and American ideal and institutions that is led by this professor who is receiving death threats, Princeton University is considered one of the ivy league's most conservative campuses but conservative students say they are being singled out with death threats. One student said they would be rightly an outrage had the student been part of some other minority on campus. The atmosphere on the campus has been calm since this. The students filed two by threes in the library to prepare for their end of semester exams, many students eating lunch at the campus center yesterday said they had not heard about the incident at all and that staging protests was just not part of the culture on this campus. Mr. Nova, a conservative Mormon, attracted attention earlier this year after pinning a guest column in the student newspaper criticizing Princeton's campaign to distribute free condoms on campus as a tactic sponsorship of Hook Up Sex. He began receiving threatening letters and death threats and e-mails after that column ran.

And yet it foes on to say in this that the university has done nothing, nothing. And no one is speaking out. Here is a Hispanic that was beaten up, just Hispanic. Doesn't matter who beat anything up. If the guy wasn't a conservative, just the Hispanic part would have caused riots. Then he's not only being nailed for his conservative view but also his religious view. What is happening on our campuses?

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: It is absolutely unspeakable in terms of that is something that should repulse people. I guess my question is, you know, what would happen if that person was criticizing President Bush. The university probably would have declared -- would have probably thrown all those students out of school.

GLENN: Absolutely.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: You know, the statement's true that, you know, liberals believe in free speech but only as long as you agree with them.

GLENN: Yeah.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: That's what is taking place on our campuses. All these people who have kind of matriculated up to that ivory tower are now starting to impart their views on the campus, just like this vice president of student affairs in Gainesville where it was clear that she was putting her view out there and admonishing students for making a true statement such as radical Islam wants you dead. But I hope that somebody at Princeton, you know, one of our top leading universities in the country, I hope somebody up there is going to, you know, take this fight on and make sure that there's justice on that campus because that is, you know, that is unacceptable.

GLENN: Well, thank you very much, Adam, and keep up the fight and you let us know if there's anything we can do to help you down there.

REPRESENTATIVE HASNER: Thanks for all you do, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet. Bye-bye.

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