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To: rmlew

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)...


6 posted on 04/06/2005 10:49:42 AM PDT by Piranha
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To: Piranha
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.
8 posted on 04/06/2005 11:01:52 AM PDT by rmlew (Copperheads and Peaceniks beware! Sedition is a crime.)
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