Today, Joe Malchow brings good news on two fronts. First, the Trustees have asked that the Association of Alumni suit brought against them for attempting to abrogate the College’s longstanding rules about election of board members be dropped, and promised that in return they will not undertake to stack the Board. This is a victory for the College, and for alumni rights generally.

Second, he has this to say about Robert Spencer’s Islamofascism Awareness Week address:

Yesterday evening, in the culmination of Dartmouth’s Islamofascism Awareness Week, Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org addressed an assembly of students, faculty, and townsfolk in historic Dartmouth Hall Room 105. Mr. Spencer’s speech and the question session which followed—which were met with tremendous teeth gnashing in their run-up this whole week—were remarkably subdued and civil. Mr. Spencer’s security man told me afterwards that Dartmouth was by lengths the most civil crowd, its politesse far exceeding that of Brown, where Mr. Spencer spoke the evening before.
In the event, Mr. Spencer’s entire speech was not a detailed analysis of Islamic terrorism but rather, in essence, a justification for his speech. If it sounds a bit off that an invited speaker should spend his allotted duration justifying his invitation, recall that Islamofascism Awareness Week is engaged in one narrow endeavor, and that is to remind addled collegians that indeed there exist such things as Islamofascists, and they have workable ideas about wiping out whole societies. Mr. Spencer seems to have succeeded on this point, with this crowd.
As has become the tradition with heterodox speakers at Dartmouth, Economics Professor Meir Kohn—whose class is widely and incessantly hailed as simply one of the best at the College—gave the speaker a gracious, witty introduction. For your enjoyment I reprint it below.

Congratulations for not sucking, ladies and gentlemen. I’m proud of you for not being jackasses, like the students, faculty and administrations of some other institutions I could name.

Good evening. My name is Meir Kohn and I am a professor in the Economics Department.
I seem to be the designated introducer of politically-incorrect speakers. I only wish I had more opportunities!
The last occasion was almost three years ago when I had the honor of introducing Daniel Pipes.
Tonight, it is my honor to introduce Robert Spencer.
Before I do so, however, I would like to say a few words about Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, of which this evening’s talk is the keynote event.
I won’t say anything about Islamo-Fascism: I leave that in the capable hands of Mr. Spencer. It is the “Awareness” part that I wish to address.
Why is an Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week necessary?
Awareness of what? I am quite sure that you are all aware of Islamo-Fascism, whatever you may prefer to call it. America tried for a long time to ignore the threat of Islamo-Fascism, but 9/11 was pretty successful in getting our attention. So that isn’t really it.
So this initiative isn’t about raising awareness of Islamo-Fascism so much as it about raising awareness of the silence about Islamo-Fascism on American campuses. Indeed, students at Dartmouth won’t hear much about Islamo-Fascism from their professors or from officially-invited speakers.
A professor of middle east studies at Dartmouth quoted in yesterday’s D, sniffed that he had never heard the term used in “academic circles.” Exactly!

‘Academic circles’, in case you hadn’t noticed, are overwhelmingly dominated by the left. The culture of the academic left is a kind of watered-down Marxism.
It has been said that Marxism survives today in only three places: North Korea, Cuba, and among the faculty of American universities.
The view of Islamo-Fascism in leftist ‘academic circles’ is, to put it delicately, ambivalent.
A movement that is anti-American and anti-capitalist can’t be all bad.

Of course, they do kill a lot of people, and they have a less than liberated attitude to women and gays.
So it is a little awkward to actually come out and endorse them.
So the compromise is a neutral silence.
The goal of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is to challenge this silence and to raise your awareness of it. It is easy to be unaware of a silence.
Our country, indeed our civilization, is locked in a life and death struggle with a poisonous ideology. It is not only a war of bombs and bullets but also a war of ideas. One of the fronts in that war is the American campus. The silence must be broken.
That brings me to tonight’s speaker.
Robert Spencer is one of a select group of courageous and dedicated scholars—mostly outside ‘academic circles’—laboring to educate Americans about the danger we face from radical Islam.
Others include Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, Michael Ledeen, and David Horowitz (the organizer of I-F A W).

Mr. Spencer has spent the last 20 years studying Islamic theology, law, and history.
He is currently the direct of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of two New York Times bestsellers on Islamic jihad—“The Truth About Muhammad” and The “Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)”. He has written seven books, ten monographs, and well over two hundred articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism.
Before I turn the podium over to Mr. Spencer, I would like to thank the students responsible for bringing him to Dartmouth—Harrison Sonntag, Harrison Davies, and Alexandra Lippman.
They have shown great courage and steadfastness in the face of considerable hostility. They make me proud to be at Dartmouth.
Now please join me in welcoming Robert Spencer.