Free Republic

The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building

A widely-publicized attack on supporters of Israel by two leading academics commits a fair number of inaccuracies not the least of which is their characterization of controversies surrounding the Israel Lobby as they manifest themselves on American campuses. “In September 2002, for example, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neoconservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report comments or behavior that might be considered hostile to Israel,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in a recent report which also appeared in abbreviated form in the London Review of Books....

In reaction to a new film on academic bias and harassment of Israel-sympathetic students at Columbia University, the school's president, Lee C. Bollinger, has decided to have the charges raised by the documentary investigated. The short video, which shows students describing instances of intimidation and hostility by faculty members of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, is the latest in a series of efforts by students and some Columbia community members to get the word out that the school has a problem of anti-Israel bias. They allege that the school's Middle East classes are unbalanced and...