Notwithstanding all this, The Cartoons That Shook the World is an informative read. But you won’t find the actual cartoons in it. There’s a cartoon mocking George W. Bush; there’s a death threat against the cartoonists. But Yale University Press refused to publish Klausen’s book as she submitted it — with the 12 Danish cartoons. Yale ordered her to remove the cartoons, citing unnamed “experts” who claimed the book “ran a serious risk of instigating violence.” Several American newspapers, like The Philadelphia Inquirer, published the cartoons without incident. Yale has had no actual threats, but it pre-emptively surrendered. If Klausen wanted to live up to Yale’s motto — “light and truth” — she would have done what the entire editorial staff of the New York Press did in 2006 when their publisher vetoed their reprinting of the cartoons: They resigned en masse.
Given Klausen’s burning derision for Fogh Rasmussen’s decision to stand for freedom, it’s no surprise she collapsed immediately herself, academic integrity be damned. Her surrender — and Yale’s — is not a detail but a central part of the story, for it is exactly the outcome desired by the Danish imams, the Saudi diplomats and their chorus of rioters.
Ezra Levant, “Review: The Cartoons that Shook the World, by Jytte Klausen Cartoon logic”, The Globe and Mail, 2009-10-24
October 26, 2009
QotD: Neither full veritas nor much lux
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