Remember Molly Norris

Well, here's my story. It's not specifically about Yale's cowardice, but close enough. In September of 2010, Seattle Weekly announced that its cartoonist, Molly Norris, had "gone ghost." The FBI had said that it could not protect her from all the threats she was receiving. Norris had received a brief flurry of publicity earlier that year when she created "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," but now that she had been forced into hiding there had been nary a peep from her journalistic peers. A fatwa against Norris had been issued by none other than Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who received loads of favorable attention from major American media outlets until his radicalism was exposed. For all of the self-congratulatory rhetoric journalists dish out about their commitment to free speech, I thought the silence regarding her being forced into hiding was pretty appalling.

Read all of Mark Hemingway's essay.