My brother attended Columbia in the seventies. It was very heavily Jewish back then. I am amazed at the brazeness of the anti-Semites to invade that university. I am far less amazed at the unwillingness of liberal administrators to stand up to that transformation.
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I was at Columbia back in the 70's. I don't think the ethnic composition of the school has changed much since then. While the campus was vaguely anti capitalist and vehemently anti vietnam, the term flyover country had not yet been invented--but that was an appropriate term for the way everything between the coasts was viewed.
At the time I did a film for the admissions office in which I interviewed Edward Said. I don't recall the details of the conversation. My impression of the guy back then was that he was token arab on the campus faculty. As opposed to many on the campus who were anti american--Said was anti western. A strange bird indeed. You'd have to have had a grasp of western history for the last couple millenium and the final collapse of the european overseas empires in the 1960's to understand where Said was coming from. Not many did.
The views of the guy who now occupies Said's chair are likely not much different from Said. What's changed is the American and Columbian view of these anti western types.
Ditto 57-61 about the large numbers of Jewish students. There were probably two reasons: 1.Some Ivies were still showing their anti-Semetic bias in admissions. 2. Columbia tried to recruit 1/3 of each class from NYC and environs, 1/3 from upstate and the east, and 1/3 from the rest of the country if they could get 'em. A lot of the NYC guys were Jewish.
Then one year (Class of '64?) they threw out the diversity model and simply took the top 3000 SAT scores that applied. What a monster class that was :-) More geniuses than could get along with each other. And it was heavily from NYC and Jewish.
I've been amazed that the Jewish vote has stayed with the Dems-- despite their long history as liberals. Over the years, the left has increasingly gone for the Arab position and condemned Israel.
Must make many of my old classmates uncomfortable to be in the DEM party. And they must really be wondering about their old school. I wonder how the recent publicity has hurt recruiting and donations from alumnai?