As you may have heard the Dalai Lama is making a visit to Seattle. He is scheduled to visit the University of Washington and give a speech and take question there. It should be a great speech and visit from the Dalai Lama but there is a controversy brewing. University officials have decided that since the topic of Tibet could upset their Chinese students, the questions would be pre-selected and there could be no questions about Tibet. Apparently they forgot about a little thing called the 1st Amendment.
Now I guess it pretty obvious that I am on the side that China is occupying Tibet illegally and should not be there. I have deep sympathies for the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet and I am glad the land of my ancestors (India) could give him a home when he was forced to leave his own home. But even so I am willing to listen to arguments from the other side about why it is right for China to be in Tibet. After all, thanks to the right of freedom of speech, we can say what we want in an open environment.
This is not the first time something like this has happened. When Microsoft and Google tried to open in China they had to ban certain words from their search engines, words such as freedom. Now while I am disturbed by that there is not much you can do in China, but here in the United States you should not allow similar events to happen. So while it may bother some Chinese students here to hear about the Tibet situation, they should learn to deal with it.
As for the games I plan to stage a personal boycott of the Summer Olympics. It isn’t going to be easy especially since I think this is the year the US Men's basketball team regains their dominance but it something I feel I must do for the atrocities going on in Tibet.