Your Voice | Letters

Why the name change?

To the editor: I was disappointed to read that the College Republicans caved to pressure from the Muslim Students' Association and dropped the term "Islamo-Fascism" from their planned awareness week ("After name conflicts, groups begin events," 10/22/07). Islamo-Fascism does not imply that all Muslims are fascists, just as terms like "white supremacy" and "Christian fundamentalism" do not imply that all whites and Christians are racists and radicals. Rather, Islamo-Fascism refers to the well-established fact that a small contingent of Muslims have hijacked a peaceful religion and twisted its tenets to advocate dictatorial governance, suppression of opposition and terrorism.

The College Republicans would have been better off clarifying the precise meaning of Islamo-Fascism, rather than agreeing to censorship in the name of political correctness.

Scott Kahn College senior

Confusion over the location of Rick Santorum's speech

To the editor: There has been some misunderstanding of the sponsorship of the speech on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 24 by former Sen. Rick Santorum as part of Terrorism Awareness Week. This event was sponsored by the College Republicans and the Middle East Forum. The event was not sponsored by Penn Hillel. The venue of the event was Steinhardt Hall.

Penn Hillel encourages student groups from a wide range of political and social positions to use Steinhardt Hall as a campus venue and as a place for an open discussion of issues.

Risa Chalfin and Jeremy Brochin The authors are the president and director of Penn Hillel, respectively

A few inconvenient truths about Al Gore

To the editor: In his quip "It's difficult to know who to trust: established scientists or the man who invented the Internet," Stephen Krewson manages to pack two misleading implications in a single sentence. The "established scientists" are just two, against thousands of established climate scientists whose findings, compiled in many thousands of peer-reviewed papers and in the IPCC reports, were the basis for Gore's advocacy.

As for "inventing the Internet," Gore never claimed that. But in Congress he had a leading role in the funding and legislation that supported the creation of the open Internet we all enjoy, against the closed, proprietary networks that the telecom industry was then advocating and is still trying to re-impose.

Fernando Pereira Chair, Dept. of Computer and Information Science

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