In this case, it means Distributed Denial of Honorary degree attack.

For those not familiar with the old Charlie Brown comic strips, one of the main characters, Lucy, who used to set up shop as a pretend psychiatrist in order to better deliver more effective snarks and zingers at Charlie Brown, also had a favored humiliation for him. One that in one variation or another may seem familiar to many.

She would convince him to kick a football she would hold for him, then pull it away at the last second in order to enjoy seeing him hurt himself. (I suspect Charles Shultz dated some of the same women I did) This was a running gag for the entire lifetime of the Charlie Brown comics as far as I can remember. And, it seems, to the people at Brandeis who first offered Ayaan an honorary degree for the extraordinary work she has done for human rights around the world, and then publicly yanking it away at the last second. Quite possibly because it would add humiliation to her, presumably because of her views of Islam. Views which she comes by honestly in the most personal conceivable way. In as much as FGM performed by an imam is personal of course.

Link 1. What Ayaan Hirsi Alli would have said:

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

2. Phyllis Chesler: Op-Ed: Honor Dishonored: Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In 2003, Brandeis partnered with Al-Quds University—and did so, year after year, until 2013, when violent demonstrations broke out on the Al-Quds campus, replete with traditional Nazi salutes.

In 2006, the Brandeis community of students and professors did not protest the Distinguished Professorship Brandeis awarded to the “inflammatory” anti-Zionist playwright Tony Kushner.

In 2006, Brandeis also staged a “Voices of Palestine” exhibit. Seventeen paintings by Palestinian youths depicted their lives under Israeli “occupation.” This time, refreshingly, Brandeis students had the exhibit taken down because there was absolutely no Israeli perspective being exhibited.

3. Diana West: Enforcing islamic law at Brandeis.

Islamic blasphemy laws sanction the death penalty for exactly the kind of criticism of Islam ex-Muslim Hirsi Ali has engaged in: hence, the innumerable death threats she has received for over a decade; and hence, the ritual Islamic slaughter of Hirsi Ali’s co-producer, Theo van Gogh, for “Submission,” their short film about specifically Islamic violence and repression of women. In the U.S. (so far), punishment for such “transgressions” against Islam usually resembles an aggressive form of blackballing. There are horrifying exceptions, however, including the decision to prosecute and incarcerate Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of “Innocence of Muslims,” for “parole violations.” To be sure, when it comes to participating in the 21st-century public square – in this case, donning academic robes and making valedictory remarks – “Islamophobes” need not apply.

Click over to the links and read the full text if you are at all able. I think some of the shocking history of that university at Ms. Chesler’s article, link #2, are quite worth knowing.

This event, bad enough as it is on its own is considerably more serious when you realize its an iceberg tip in terms of how universities have come to tolerate far leftist agitation without any kind of checks and balances, or even become, as Diana West suggests, outposts for them via cultural Marxism or out-and-out sharia law advocacy as we saw years ago with denial of access to Kurt Westergaard and Lars Hedigaard at Diana’s own alma matter, Yale if I recall correctly. I also find it interesting that had it been a well-known conservative university that had pulled this same stunt, cries of racism would be deafening the legacy media till MSNBC news anchors were hoarse in the throat. I wonder how Brandeis is getting away with that so far.