On a 2013 private listserv with other faculty, Brandeis University physics professor Bob Lange said of the Benghazi attack that “whether or not the administration did or did not try to manage publicity, this Benghazi attack was not terrorism.” According to the Washington Free Beacon, Lange added that “the targets were not random Americans whose death would make us all fearful that it could be us.”
The Benghazi attack, however, seems to meet the Google definition of terrorism, “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even labeled the attack terror, 10 days after its occurrence.
Obama administration members including Clinton originally blamed an anti-Islam YouTube video, the “Innocence of Muslims,” for spurring Benghazi. In discussing this topic, another Brandeis professor, Donald Hindley, expressed anger that NPR’s reporting at the time “made no mention of the Israeli Jew film creator and his American Jewish financiers.” He said that it was “typical for NPR News, serving what the Israeli government wants us Americans to know and believe – or not know and not believe.”
He also called NPR’s reporting “profoundly shameful and anti-American.” One tiny issue other than the over anti-Semitic tone of his comments: the movie was created, produced, and promoted by an Egyptian Coptic-Christian named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula – not an Israeli.
Lange didn’t stop there though and went on to say “it is not terrorism to kill representatives of a government that you are opposed to.”
Brandeis University told Free Beacon that “the opinions expressed by individual faculty members do not reflect the opinions of Brandeis University” and that the school “upholds the principles of free speech and academic freedom for our students and faculty, which means that members of the community may hold many different opinions on a variety of topics and express them in ways that do not reflect the university’s official position on a given issue.” Those are both true. But so is the fact that sunlight is the best disinfectant and Lange’s remarks are worthy of revisiting.
