Whitewash at Columbia

Sadly, these news stories were little more that a tool for a cover up the problem at Columbia.

For the last three years, Columbia has been a battleground between supporters of aggrieved students and professors throwing around allegations of Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, intimidation, outside influence, “McCarthyism”, and “a pattern of discrimination”. The campus war was touched off in the aftermath of September 11th.

On November 15, 2001 the Wall Street Journal published a story by Martin Kramer on the failure of Middle Eastern Studies scholars to address anti-Western violence or Islamism. Kramer singled out two professors who taught at Columbia, the late Edward Said, and the former president of Columbia's Middle East Institute, Richard Bulliet.

Over the next year Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, National Review, and the Columbia Daily Spectator, covered a series of anti-American, anti-Israel activism. That November, the history department offered the Professor Rashid Khalidi position of being the first Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Literature. On January 27, 2003, the Columbia University Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture (MEALAC) held a Palestinian Film Festival, “Dreams of a Nation”, promoting the destruction of Israel. On March 5, at the John Jay Awards ceremony, award winner John Corigliano condemned Middle Eastern studies leading to a vitriolic response by MEALAC chairman, Hamid Dabashi.

This is a background piece on the situation at Columbia. It also includes analysis of the Ad Hoc Grievence Committee report and on the university's successfull tactics at distorting the story with the help of liberal and lazy press.
For more on the story, I suggest going to the Campus Watch page on Columbia and to Columbians for Academic Freedom.
While not directly involved in the MEALAC fight, the Columbia College Conservative Club and Columbia Conservative Alumnia Association are pressing for balance in all departments.

Thank you for your comprehensive, well-written piece. I, for one, was unaware of (or had forgotten about) the Blasi commission.

I think that serious attention has to be given to the proper role of University administrators in correcting a biased department -- something that President Bollinger proudly announced he would not do. As I wrote on another thread, the administration is abrogating its responsibility to department heads, who basically are given a free hand to do anything that they want.

What would President Bollinger do about a head of a natology department who was stridently anti-abortion and only hired professors who shared his belief? What would he do about the head of an English department who believed that only homosexuals can produce meaningful works ofliterature, and only hired professors who shared his belief? What would he do about the head of an economics department who was a Marxist, only staffed his department with confirmed Marxist economists? What would he do about the head of a biology department who stridently opposed the theory of evolution and only staffed his department with confirmed creationists?

Particularly at Columbia, which is so proud of its core curriculum, it is a tragedy to see departments grow in a vacuum, independent of any corrective forces to draw them back into the mainstream. In fact, it is particularly galling that Palestinian arabs are the focus of this department, when there are so many things happening in the Middle East independent of the Palestinian arabs. It seems to me that the department not only is teaching incorrectly about Israel, but it is abrogating its own responsibility by ignoring Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and all the "Stans", where so much is occurring.

I had counselled patience in the past, in the belief that President Bollinger would flex his muscle and ultimately clean up the department, or that the Trustees (including Esta Stecher, who grew up an involved Jewish woman) would pressure the administration back toward fairness. Based upon his response since the report was ready to be released, I no longer have that confidence.

I hope that other alumni with bigger pocketbooks than mine, like Robert Kraft, are having closed-door meetings to try and rectify the situation.

In any case, your article can be a significant turning-point in raising public awareness of what is occurring there. Now if there only were the means to send it to Columbia alumni as a mass mailing (or a mass emailing)...

Bollinger made it perfectly clear that he opposes ideological balance or even diversity as a goal.On March 23rd, as guest speak for the NYC Association of the Bar's annual Benjamin N Cardozo Lecture, Columbia President Lee Bollinger addressed the issues of academic bias and academic freedom. After dismissing allegations of bias or anti-Semitism at Columbia as absurd, Bollinger made it clear that the proposed remedy of bringing balance would risk the unity of the university.

We should not accept the idea that the remedy for lapses is to add more professors with different political points of view, as some would have us do. The notion of a balanced curriculum, in which students can, in effect, select and compensate for bias, sacrifices the essential norm of what we are supposed to be about in a university. It's like saying of doctors in a hospital that there should be more Republicans, or more Democrats. It also risks polarization of the university, where liberals take courses from liberal professionals and conservatives take conservatives classes. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/03/cardozo_lecture.html

I'm currently writting an article specifically on Bollinger.

Teh New York times adimitted that it's initial story on the report at Columbia was written improperly. Of course, they chalk it up to an author's error, rather than complicity.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html

A front-page article on Thursday described a report by a committee at Columbia University formed to investigate complaints that pro-Israel Jewish students were harassed by pro-Palestinian professors. The report found "no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic," but it did say that one professor "exceeded commonly accepted bounds" of behavior when he became angry at a student who he believed was defending Israel's conduct toward Palestinians.

The article did not disclose The Times's source for the document, but Columbia officials have since confirmed publicly that they provided it, a day before its formal release, on the condition that the writer not seek reaction from other interested parties.

Under The Times's policy on unidentified sources, writers are not permitted to forgo follow-up reporting in exchange for information. In this case, editors and the writer did not recall the policy and agreed to delay additional reporting until the document had become public. The Times insisted, however, on getting a response from the professor accused of unacceptable behavior, and Columbia agreed.

Last Wednesday night, after the article had been published on The Times's Web site, the reporter exchanged messages with one of the students who had lodged the original complaints. The student was expecting to read the report shortly. But because of the lateness of the hour, and concern about not having response from other interested parties, the reporter did not wait for a comment for later versions, including the printed one, after the student had read the report.

Without a response from the complainants, the article was incomplete; it should not have appeared in that form. The response was included in an article on Friday. (Go to Article)

Of course, they have yet to explain the failure to compair the report, the mandate, and the Columbia Press release. Had they done so, they would see that the report is a whitewash and that they helped perpetuate the myth that the report investigated anti-Semitism and that all claims were investigated.

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