A Seriously Flawed Commencement Choice

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Finals seasons is upon us, so papers and exams are currently demanding most of my time. The following is an op-ed I wrote slated to be published in The Justice student newspaper on Tuesday:

Last year, the Class of 2005 had the opportunity to listen to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Margaret Marshall deliver the keynote address at its commencement. A South Africa native, Marshall was an outspoken opponent of apartheid while growing up. In 2003, Marshall wrote the majority opinion in the court case that mandated equal marriage rights for same-sex couples in Massachusetts.

This year, however, the Brandeis administration has apparently decided to reverse course. After choosing a woman who has devoted her life to furthering civil rights, the University has now chosen a man who has spent his life denying people’s rights. Addressing the Class of 2006 will be Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, a major power in that country’s monarchy. Prince El Hassan has been a leading deputy to the Jordanian throne since the 1960s, and was the heir apparent to former King Hussein until 1999 when Talal’s nephew King Abdullah II assumed the crown. With his longtime role as a prominent voice in the king’s inner circle, Prince El Hassan is inextricably involved in the Jordanian government’s questionable human rights record and suppression of political opponents.

During Prince El Hassan’s long tenure as a leader in the Jordan, the kingdom has been consistent in repressing political opposition, censoring newspapers and swiftly punishing dissenters of all stripes. Criticizing the royal family (Prince El Hassan included) is a serious crime that will likely land the offender in jail and at the mercy of the regime’s torturous intelligence services.

Moreover, despite claims of liberalization by the Jordanian royal family, Human Rights Watch notes the existence of “continuing serious rights abuses in Jordan.” According to an Amnesty International report, the monarchy can freely detain its citizens without charges, and suspects in state custody are often tortured. The report also notes that so-called “honor killings” of women persist in Jordan, and the government has largely condoned the practice, treating male murderers with only a slap on the hand.

If you were to read the fawning description of Prince El Hassan on the Brandeis website, however, you would not know any of this. In the press release announcing the prince as a speaker and recipient of an honorary degree (just like the one the Dalai Lama was given in 1998), the prince is portrayed as a progressive intellectual, not as a man who has played an instrumental role in shaping the policies of a repressive government. The Brandeis press release dwells mostly upon the work he has supposedly done to advance religious freedom, lauding him as “a leading international advocate of interfaith dialogue and understanding.”

Indeed, Prince El Hassan has spoken frequently of religious tolerance, but the record of his government belies this.

The 2002 International Religious Freedom Report issued by the U.S. State Department reveals a number of alarming things. In Jordan, as in Afghanistan where the prosecution of Christian convert Abdul Rahman generated international outrage a few weeks ago, Muslims are forbidden from converting to other faiths. The government appoints imams and forbids them from preaching anything inconsistent with the views of the government. Muslim opponents of the regime are frequently detained with baseless accusations of terrorism. Furthermore, members of the Druze and Baha’i minority faiths in Jordan routinely face discrimination, with the government embarking on a vicious campaign to officially deny and suppress the religions. I wonder how Prince El Hassan explains that when he attends his international conferences on religious understanding.

Although Jordan is considered a “moderate” government by Middle East standards—meaning that it looks good in comparison to Syrian Ba’athists or Saudi Islamists, which isn’t that difficult—it is a reactionary, repressive state in regards to political freedom, human rights and women’s rights. By inviting a prominent Jordanian government figure, Brandeis is engaging in an unfortunate but all too typical form of condescension toward Arabs. Put another way, if the British or French governments were as repressive and undemocratic as Jordan’s, Brandeis would certainly not be interested in inviting a British or French leader. The Arab world, however, is held to a different standard, one that acts as though universal human rights mean a different thing to people in the Middle East. Thus, Arab regimes such as Jordan’s are given a pat on the head as long as they make show reforms while running closed autocratic states.

Brandeis would be well-advised to reverse its decision to welcome Prince El Hassan as a commencement speaker. For a university founded upon the principles of justice and tolerance, and with a proud history of human rights activism and social conscience, this choice is odd at best and offensive at worst. Both the Class of 2006 and the entire University deserve better.