Free Republic

Barack Obama ’83 was sworn in this month as the sole African American in the U.S. Senate, and only the fifth in history. He is the highest-ranking African-American elected official in the United States. But that’s not all he is being celebrated for. After delivering an eloquent, energizing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last July, Obama became a national figure whom some are calling the future of the Democratic Party. Politicians from both sides of the aisle acknowledge that he has a natural ability — partly stemming from his biracial and itinerant background — to connect with a...

During Columbia University’s ServiceNation Presidential Forum on the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, Judy Woodruff of PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” demonstrated that she understands as much about volunteerism as Charlie Gibson does about the Bush Doctrine. (If you want to read more, this is the second item on the page.)

Hatfill's lawyers alleged that the three officials who leaked investigative details to the news media were Roscoe C. Howard Jr., who from 2001 to 2004 served as U.S. attorney for District of Columbia; Daniel S. Seikaly, who served as Howard's criminal division chief; and Edwin Cogswell, who formerly served as a spokesman for the FBI. .... U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the lawyers for the government and for Hatfill to seek "mediation" over the next two months. The prospects of a mediated settlement notwithstanding, Walton said he expected a trial could begin in December. Hatfill's lawyers, Grannis and...

The conference program on the sponsors’ website promises to air a “wide range of viewpoints” on what happened and why, but the list of speakers shows no range at all—everyone seems to be a proud ex-protester or at least a familiar partisan of the Left. While Todd Gitlin (formerly the president of Students for a Democratic Society, now at Columbia’s journalism school) is a sober and reflective thinker, most of his fellow speakers are far from that standard. They include Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver’s widow and a former Black Panther official; veteran activist Tom Hayden; several former members of the...

NEW YORK (MNA) – An academic delegation of Columbia University professors and deans of faculties plans to visit Tehran to officially apologize to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The delegation plans to express regret for the insulting remarks Columbia University President Lee Bollinger directed at Ahmadinejad on September 24 in his introductory speech, the Mehr News Agency correspondent in New York reported. Since the incident, the deans and professors from the faculties of history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, philosophy, and Islamic studies have criticized Bollinger’s behavior toward Ahmadinejad. A member of the delegation, who requested anonymity, said the main goal of...

Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, was confronted yesterday by discontented professors who gathered more than 100 faculty signatures for a document criticizing his leadership. Their “statement of concern,” read to him at a faculty meeting, outlined a grab bag of charges, some relating to governance of the university and some concerning Middle East issues that have repeatedly troubled the campus, in particular his challenging introductory remarks when the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited this fall.

NEW YORK — A Jewish professor found a swastika on her office door at Columbia University on Wednesday, the latest symbol of bias and hatred found at the school in recent weeks, police said. Elizabeth Midlarsky discovered the swastika painted on her door at Teachers College, a graduate school of education affiliated with Columbia. Madonna Constantine found a noose on her office door at the college on Oct. 9. Both are professors of psychology and education. The New York Police Department's hate crime unit is investigating both incidents. No arrests have been made, police said. School leaders said they felt...

Conservative author David Horowitz spoke at Columbia University amid tightened security Friday - the latest in a string of political lightning rods to appear at the Ivy League school. Horowitz's appearance was part of the so-called Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on college campuses, intended to foster awareness of terrorism. But some Muslims say the week's activities are fostering racism instead. Horowitz, a self-described former Marxist, said the week was an effort to distinguish ``moderate Muslims'' from ``Islamo-Fascists.'' ``This is nothing that could remotely be interpreted as an attack on Muslims. It's a defense of moderate Muslims,'' he told a peaceful lecture-hall...

In her book, the Color of Crime, University of Florida professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, found that blacks perpetrate one in six racial hoaxes. The reasons the blacks commit hoaxes aren't totally different than those of white hoaxers. Both are angry, resentful and play hard on stereotypes and fears--that whites are racist, and violent, and that blacks are menacing and violent. The hoaxes encase the worst of black and white fears about each other. [ snip ] The flurry of hanging nooses around the country may be a case in point. Hate crime experts and civil rights leaders say, and the media...

Most of us have heard about the black professor at Columbia who claims a noose was hung on her office door. Well, for some reason Columbia won't give the NYPD the videotape that could crack the case without a court order. These kind of things gets the imagination rolling. Did the black professor hang the noose on her own door and scream racism for attention? College professors have faked hate crimes before. Liberal students posing as conservatives have faked hate crimes. Was the person who hung the noose a relative of a dean or a star field hockey player? Did...

Madonna Constantine, the Columbia University professor who found a noose on her office door Tuesday morning, said she felt not only angry but embarrassed when she saw the noose. "I know I don't really have a reason to be embarrassed about it because this was the work of someone who, you know, is not a secure person at some level, but it felt as though it was directed toward me," Constantine said in an exclusive interview today on "Good Morning America." "It felt very personal and very degrading," she said. New York police are treating the incident as a hate...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- Columbia University has refused to turn over security videotape that could help identify who hung a noose on a black professor's office door, police said Thursday. Investigators began asking on Wednesday for tapes from cameras in the building, but have been rebuffed by administrators, said Paul Browne, the New York Police Department's top spokesman. He said police will have to get a court order to force the school to provide video they believe could crack the case. "It's unfortunate because it adds a time-consuming step to the investigation," Browne said. A Columbia spokesman did not immediately...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad celebrated Al-Quds Day today by calling Israel's existence an "insult to human dignity". Backed by chants of "Death To America!", the Iranian president and recent guest of Columbia University challenged Europe to give land to the Jews and to oppose Israel and the United States: Millions of Iranians attended nationwide rallies Friday in support of the Palestinians, while the country's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel's continued existence was an "insult to human dignity." "The creation, continued existence and unlimited (Western) support for this regime is an insult to human dignity," Ahmadinejad said. "The occupation of Palestine is...

When I tell you that Americans are quickly losing their ability to discern right from wrong, this is what I mean. That kind of discernment is being rapidly and systematically purged from their brains and their souls and their consciences by America's own "educational system." You attend institutions like Columbia today not for "higher education," but for advanced degrees in intellectual confusion, moral relativism and anti-Americanism. This is what has me distressed about Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia. I simply can't get the sound of the spontaneous applause for this genocidal lunatic out of my mind. I know political correctness is...

The President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, really gave it to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He really did. He called Ahmadinejad a "petty and cruel dictator" and many other harsh names. All richly deserved. And it is likely that President Bollinger felt that he had done a good thing. In fact, however, as many of us predicted, it was Ahmadinejad who won. The very moment the Iranian Holocaust-denier was given a university platform, he won. Even the deserved insults gave Ahmadinejad a victory. Most people do not like their leaders publicly insulted abroad, even if they agree with most of...

"I'm proud of my university today," Stina Reksten, a 28-year-old Columbia graduate student from Norway, told the New York Times. "I don't want to confuse the very dire human-rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom." Isn't it always? But enough about Iran, let's talk about me. The same university that shouted down an American anti-illegal-immigration activist and the same university culture that just deemed former Harvard honcho Larry Summers too misogynist to be permitted on a California campus is now congratulating itself over its commitment to "academic freedom." True,...

Last week, Iranian president and nutcase Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was allowed to enter the United States so as to speak to his fellow haters of the United States at the annual re-enactment of the cantina scene in "Star Wars" known as the United Nations General Assembly. Along the way, he stopped off at another bastion of American disdain, Columbia University. And with the exception of his denial of the presence of homosexuals in Iran, he received thunderous applause from the ignorant, if not seditious, faculty and students thereof. (Maybe we should have convinced Columbia that Ahmedinejad was a conservative. Then they...

During his visit to New York this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked every basic assumption upon which Western civilization is predicated. Ahmadinejad offered up his attacks while extolling his vision of Islamic global domination. Refusing to note his existential challenge to the Free World, the Western media concentrated their coverage of his trip on his statements regarding specific Western policy goals. His rejection of the UN Security Council's authority to take action against Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program; his championing of the Palestinian cause and Israel's destruction; his denials of Iranian support for terrorism, and his attacks against the...

There is a suicidal mania that tends to grip the American media and academia from time to time, and it has happened again with the American visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the poster boy for state sponsors of terrorism. It's bad enough that Ahmadinejad was among friends when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in late September, but when major American newspapers, several American TV networks, including CBS's 60 Minutes, the National Press Club, and a major Ivy League university give a significant propaganda victory to a man who is arguably the most dangerous man alive, there's a...

Patriots need to learn to two words -- "treason" and "traitor." The American people need to hear the truth - that the left has gone far beyond dissent. It betrays America at every turn. Its hatred of our nation - our history and underlying ethos - is visible in word and deed. It slanders the republic, lies about our past, undercuts our warriors, revels in American deaths and consorts with the enemy in time of war (aid and comfort, and all that). These reflections are prompted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University, in the course of his...

Isn't it always? But enough about Iran, let's talk about me! The same university that shouted down an American anti-illegal-immigration activist and the same university culture that just deemed former Harvard honcho Larry Summers too misogynist to be permitted on campus is now congratulating itself over its commitment to "academic freedom." True, renowned Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo is not happy. "They can have any fascist they want there," said professor Zimbardo, "but this seems egregious." But, hey, don't worry: He was protesting not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at Columbia but Donald Rumsfeld's presence at the Hoover Institution.... Lots of prime...

H.R. 3675: To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University HR 3675 IH 110th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 3675 To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES September 26, 2007Mr. HUNTER introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor A BILL To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `Restore Patriotism to...

1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced mah-MOOD ah-mah-dih-nee-ZHAD) was born Oct. 28, 1956, three years after the CIA-sponsored coup that installed the pro-Western leader Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran's leader. A Shiite Muslim, he and his wife, a professor, have two sons and a daughter. 2. When he was an infant, Ahmadinejad's family moved from the village of Aradan to Tehran. It was at this point that the family changed its name from Saborjhian, which translates to "thread painter" (the lowliest job in Iran's traditional carpet-weaving industry), to the more religious Ahmadinejad ("race of Muhammad" or "virtuous race"). 3. Ahmadinejad is...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have faced ridicule in the United States by suggesting there were no homosexuals in Iran, but he won praise at home on Wednesday for taking his country's case to "the Lion's Den." Generally, politicians and media in the Islamic Republic -- even some who have previously criticized the president -- described Ahmadinejad's visit to New York as a triumph and denounced the university president who called him "a petty and cruel dictator." But one pro-reform newspaper said that, although the president told his U.S. audience he respected academics, that was not always how it seemed at...

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger exercised his free speech rights by giving guest lecturer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a good tongue lashing. It is doubtful his words swayed the Iranian despot – “OK, OK, the Holocaust happened, and I will dismantle my nuclear program just as soon as I get back home!” - but with his tough talk “Bollinger had clawed his way back to semi-respectability in polite society by insulting his guest - not the usual practice in polite society, but consider the depth of the hole Bollinger had dug for himself by insisting on being a good academic liberal,” as...

On Monday, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger slightly redeemed himself and his institution by charging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with "[exhibiting] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Yesterday, President George W. Bush, speaking to the UN, stood up for human rights around the world. "In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration," Bush said. Yet here too there was a disconnect. The speech seem to have been written almost as if the jihadi bid for global dominance did not exist. How is it possible to speak...

A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an "insulting tone" and that his remarks amounted to "schoolyard taunts." The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger's critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn't deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy. Mr. Bollinger opened a two-hour program during which the Iranian president spoke and answered questions at the Roone Arledge Auditorium in Morningside Heights by calling Mr....

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Seven chancellors and presidents of Iranian universities and research centers, in a letter addressed to their counterpart in the US Colombia University, denounced Lee Bollinger's insulting words against the Iranian nation and president and invited him to provide responses for 10 questions of the Iranian academicians and intellectuals. The following is the full text of the letter. Mr. Lee Bollinger Columbia University President We, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran , hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent speech at Columbia...

In the end, the critics of Columbia University may have been both right and wrong. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the Ivy League school on Monday at the invitation of its chief executive, the First Amendment scholar and celebrated liberal Lee Bollinger. When Mr. Bollinger announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad was to be the latest in a long line of world leaders to lecture at Columbia, he didn't seem to have anticipated that anyone would have a problem. If he had, he probably would have prepared a defence of the invitation that went beyond a simpleminded recitation of free speech...

Duncan Hunter shows his true (Latin strongman) colors From the web site of Alpine's own presidential candidate: Monday, September 24, 2007 Hunter Warns Columbia University to Cancel Invitation to Iranian President Manchester, NH... At 11:30 a.m. this morning Congressman Duncan Hunter is holding a Town hall Meeting at the New England College, 98 Bridge Street, Henniker, New Hampshire in the Simon center. Hunter will issue a statement directed to Columbia University and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visit. In a recent press conference Hunter said "To host the leader of Iran when he supports terrorists that are moving deadly roadside bombs across...

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to America this week to address the United Nations and found himself the center of an American media storm. The Iranian president is routinely demonized in the United States for allegedly “denying the Holocaust” and calling for the “destruction of Israel.” Ahmadinejad has also been criticized for oppressing Iranian citizens, persecuting women and dissidents including members of the Bahai’ faith and homosexuals. President Bush has used Ahmadinejad and Iran as a distraction to redirect American anger from the lies he used to justify invading Iraq and the increasing American casualties. Columbia University and its president,...

I was listening to Jay Seculo's radio show on Christian radio today, and for two days in a row, they mentioned Duncan Hunter. Today they said that Duncan Hunter, who worked with them (aclj.org) in keeping the Mt. Soledad Cross standing, is in the process of crafting legislation that would take away from Columbia University some of the federal funding because they allowed Ahmadinejad on the stage. You can hear the comments about Duncan Hunter for yourself, by clicking the link. It is at the beginning of the show, and the rest of the show is also excellent regarding Columbia...

COLUMBIA University Presi dent Lee Bollinger yester day made some cutting crit icisms while introducing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but that doesn't make the school's decision to offer a platform to the head of a violent terrorist state any less abject, squalid or shameless. "Abject, squalid, shameless" is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University's prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power - that "this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country." And Columbia's event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a "very...

So, in the end, Monday the Iranian wild man Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a dressing down from the man who had invited him -- in the name of free speech, you understand -- to speak at Columbia University. Likely, by time for the speech, Columbia President Lee Bollinger had no choice other than to perfume himself against the stench from a statesman who proposes to exterminate Israel, presides over one of the world's least free regimes and may, to boot, have a secret nuclear weapons program going. Bollinger had been getting unshirted hell from reasonable people displeased -- as why wouldn't...

The president of Columbia University is expressing relief that a Columbia alumnus was released from an Iranian prison -- just days before the Iranian president is scheduled to speak at Columbia University. Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, who works for George Soros's Open Society Institute, was one of several Iranian-Americans detained by Iran for allegedly conspiring against Iran's national security. Tajbakhsh was freed on bail last Thursday. Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad is speaking at Columbia on Monday, and the invitation for him to appear on campus has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians and ordinary Americans, who view Amadinejad as an enemy of...

Recently, we sat down with a distinguished group of Middle Eastern experts to ask specific questions related to Ahmadinejad's visit to the UN and Columbia University. Here, they give a voice to most Americans from both parties, and all backgrounds, regarding the dreaded Iranian threat.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Columbia University President Lee Bollinger excoriated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday, going through a long list of documented actions and remarks by the firebrand Iranian leader and his government. "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said to applause from many of the 600 people in the room for a speech from the Iranian leader. He cited the Iranian government's "brutal crackdown" on dissidents, public executions, executions of minors and other actions. And Bollinger assailed Ahmadinejad's "denying" of the Holocaust as "ridiculous" and "dangerous propaganda." He called the...

The Trustees of Columbia University hired and evaluate the performance of President Lee Bollinger. The New York Sun assigns them a large measure of blame for a history of failure in monitoring and evaluating the leadership of Columbia University, culminating in the travesty of the visit of Iranian "President" Ahmadinajed to the campus today, just two days after Yom Kippur, the holiest day for the Jewish community. Here is a list of the Trustees. One prominent member is Eric Holder, who was appointed to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia by President Clinton. Then Clinton...

In the 1930s, the Columbia administration participated in what could be described as the coddling of the Nazi regime. In 1933, Nazi ambassador Hans Luther gave a speech on campus in which, according to a 2006 article in Spectator by Rafeal Medoff, he focused on Hitler’s “peaceful intentions” in Europe. Columbia maintained student exchange programs with Nazi universities throughout the ’30s, while, in 1936, our university sent a representative to the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg, even though, writes Medoff, it had “already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a...

Columbia University has rightfully been under fire for inviting Iran's President to speak to its student body. Now Columbia's Dean is not only defending the decision, but says that Columbia would offer a platform for Hitler to come and speak if he were alive and in America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxmEGsOkEVc So, there you have Dean John Coatsworth of Columbia University was on Fox News late last week telling the world that Hitler would be invited to speak at Columbia, were he available. Wonderful. But how do you square this against the decision by Columbia to un-invite the founder of the Minutemen? How...

One of life's pivotal maxims is to anticipate problems and head them off at the pass. And in this brave new world, where we find a very dangerous nexus among rogue states, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation, it's absolutely essential to grasp the big picture and think a few steps ahead. That being said, I appreciate the analysis being provided by conservative radio and television talk-show host Glenn Beck, especially on the theme he's dubbed "the perfect storm". In short, Beck underscores how a series of events can come together to produce a devastating synergy, which can wreak havoc upon our...

Barry Rosen, executive director of public and external affairs at Borough of Manhattan Community College, was a hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981. He studied Iranian culture at Columbia University. I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University tomorrow. They instilled the belief in all of us: Everyone has the right of free speech. But I believe they'd be in a quandary about this one. I'd certainly like to talk to James Madison, who drafted our Bill of Rights, and ask him whether Ahmadinejad deserves that right. Ahmadinejad is a reprehensible leader...

Institutional memory is short, so just a flashback to the Qadhafi speech at Columbia. The sad thing is that while faculty fall all over themselves to bring repressive dictators to campus, many dissidents from the same countries are ignored. Columbia has never invited chief Libyan democracy activist Fathi El-Jahmi, for example (his mailing address for the last two and a half years would be Libya's state prison system). Likewise, Richard Bulliet, Columbia's point man to arrange giving a platform to Ahmadinejad, does not extend invitations to people like Mansour Osanlou, the head of the Islamic Republic's first independent trade union...

This week the once-esteemed Columbia University will host another speaker in its on-going “Conversations with Islamo-Fascists" series. I can hear the speaker’s introduction music now: You can reach me by caravan, Cross the desert like an Arab man I don't care how you get here, Just get here if you can This is the second time that Columbia University has invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on their campus. His first speech was canceled because of security concerns. No, not security concerns over inviting a terrorist to an American university, but concerns that they couldn’t guarantee the safety of...

Columbia President Lee Bollinger said it was a question of and academic freedom, he was speaking of the invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the University of Columbia. But how soon we forget [there are voices not welcome on the Columbia campus and free speech has been stifled there]

Inviting Ahmadinejad was not enough. It turns out, Columbia University has opened a new School of Terrorism. http://www.columbiasupportsterror.com/

Iran Hitler Ahmadinejad At Columbia - Free Speech Or Incitement? By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----September 23...... As one who studied at Columbia University, I am both embarrassed and ashamed of that fact today. Columbia University in New York City had one of the finest journalism schools in the US, that is until Columbia invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran to speak at Columbia tomorrow. The Iran President left Tehran for New York today and will participate in a question and answer forum at Columbia tomorrow. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is traveling to New York to address the United...

Geraldo Rivera of Fox news is at Columbia University. He's surrounded by sell-out Americans who actually believe Achminidad has the right to speak at any American venue. His going-away party consisted of a parade in Tehran with signs saying "Down with the USA". This Iranian golden monkey is trying to gain the hearts and minds of our academic lemming left. Achmadinijad has no right to exercise OUR right to the freedom of speech our framers risked all to give us. Where are the activists? Some times I wish I still lived in NYC. Activists at Columbia University and the United...

The invitation by Columbia University to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran beggars belief and brings one of America's foremost institutions of higher learning into disrepute. Columbia's distinguished president, Lee Bollinger, defended the invitation as being in keeping with "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate." Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that the American people are eager for different opinions about the world, and he is looking forward to providing them with "correct and clear information," state media reported. The hardline Iranian leader left Sunday for New York to address the U.N. General Assembly and speak to students and teachers during a forum at Columbia University. Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops -- claims Iran denies. Ahmadinejad said his...