War / Peace

University professors across the country have found their freedom to speak about the issues surrounding September 11 hemmed in by incensed students, alumni, and university officials. Academics have been shouted down by critics who say that now isn't the time to say anything that might offend others. At California State University at Chico, a professor who criticized U.S. foreign policy was heckled by students and received an e-mail barrage of hate messages from around the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reports, "Since Sept. 11, U.S. officials have scrambled to persuade local editors and broadcasters across South Asia and the Middle East to carry stories intended to soothe anti-American passions and win tolerance for military action. They include features on the importance of Muslims in American life and hard news reports on evidence linking Mr. bin Laden to the attacks." The PR effort also includes "deploying forces to mount psychological operations, or 'psy-ops,' inside Afghanistan.

MIT Institute Professor Noam Chomsky, an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy, discusses U.S.-Muslim relations and reasons for the tensions between the two.

In a TomPaine.com commentary, Institute for Public Accuracy's Sam Husseini warns of the chilling effect the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that controls broadcast licenses, could have on reporting U.S. military actions. Husseini recalls the Pentagon Papers, an internal report on Vietnam that few media outlets would touch for fear of drawing expensive and threatening FCC investigations.