Hitchens asks, “Why did Yale University Press remove images of Mohammed from a book about the Danish cartoons?”

As you may recall, Yale University banned the Mohammed cartoons from being published in a book about the Mohammed cartoons (click on the photo to see the cartoons in full).

Today Christopher Hitchens writes,
Yale SurrendersWhy did Yale University Press remove images of Mohammed from a book about the Danish cartoons? and concludes,

It was bad enough during the original controversy, when most of the news media—and in the age of “the image” at that—refused to show the cartoons out of simple fear. But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility.

For Yale, this means, Goodbye, academic freedom. Goodbye, freedom of expression. Hello, self-censorship and fear.

Let’s hope the rest of the country doesn’t follow.