Columbia Chief Tackles Dispute Over Professors

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia's president, said in a speech on Wednesday night that professors must not use
the "podium as an ideological platform."

Faced with complaints that Columbia University has tolerated anti-Semitism and intimidation in its Middle East studies classes, Columbia's president said last night that academic freedom has some limits when it comes to the classroom and the broader educational experience.

"We should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty members above every other value," the president, Lee C. Bollinger, said in a speech to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Professors, he said, have a responsibility "to resist the allure of certitude, the temptation to use the podium as an ideological platform, to indoctrinate a captive audience, to play favorites with the like-minded and silence the others."

Arguing that the health and vigor of universities rests on their scholarly professionalism, Mr. Bollinger said that when there are lapses, they should not be "accepted without consequences."

His remarks came as Columbia awaits the report of an internal committee set up to investigate charges by some pro-Israeli students that they had been intimidated in classes by pro-Palestinian professors in the department of Middle Eastern and Asian languages and cultures and outside the classroom as well. They also said that this occurred for several years and that Columbia had not taken their charges seriously.

Their complaints were made public in October in a videotape produced by a pro-Israeli group based in Boston. The video prompted criticism outside the university and within, as well as countercharges from other students and professors who said that such intimidation had not taken place. Some of the professors accused of anti-Semitism say they have been swamped with hate mail.

Although Mr. Bollinger did not comment last night on what the report is likely to say, he said it was "simply preposterous to characterize Columbia as anti-Semitic or as having a hostile climate for Jewish students and faculty."

Still, he seemed to signal that if the committee found that professors had not been behaving professionally, the university must take it seriously, although he did not spell out what he might do. "We should not say that academic freedom means that there is no review within the university, no accountability, for the 'content' of our classes or our scholarship," he said. "There is a review, it does have consequences, and it does consider content."

Mr. Bollinger said that he was not preventing professors from expressing their opinions in the classroom, but that there were boundaries.

"The question is not whether a professor advocates a view," he said, "but whether the overall design of the class, and course, is to explore the full range of the complexity of the subject."

But he also called on vocal critics outside the university to back off from telling Columbia, or other universities, what to do. "When there are lines to be drawn," he said, "we must and will be the ones to do it. Not outside actors. Not politicians, not pressure groups, not the media. Ours is and must remain a system of self-government."

Mr. Bollinger made his remarks to a generally sympathetic audience of about 300 people. A First Amendment lawyer, Mr. Bollinger is no stranger to controversy. He was law school dean and then president at the University of Michigan when it was attacked for using race in its admissions. Two years ago, an assistant professor at Columbia said in a forum that there should be "a million Mogadishus" to teach America a lesson about imperialism, prompting angry calls from the politicians, commentators and the public for Mr. Bollinger to fire him.

While stressing that the university would not tolerate intimidation of students in the classroom, Mr. Bollinger stressed that "we will not punish professors - or students - for the speech or ideas they express as part of public debate and public issues."

He also said that the university's officials, and not students, must take the lead in ensuring that teachers in the classroom do not stray outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. "We should not accept the argument that we as teachers can do what we want because students are of sufficient good sense to know bias and indoctrination when they see it," he said. "This ignores the enormous differential in power between the professor and the student in a classroom setting.

He also rejected the "academic bill of rights" proposed by David Horowitz, a conservative activist, that, he said, calls for a plurality of methodologies and perspectives in both hiring and curricula - a proposal some state legislators are considering.

"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," Mr. Bollinger said. "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."

Bollinger opposes balanced curriculum and hiring of conservative professors

On March 23rd, as guest speak for the NYC Bar Association’s annual Benjamin N Cordozo Lecture, Columbia President Lee Bollinger addressed the issues of academic bias and academic freedom. After dismissing allegations of bias 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."
Columbia Chief Tackles Dispute Over Professors
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/education/24columbia.html?oref=login

Coming from the college president, infamous for defending quota-driven affirmative action based on the theory that racial diversity is necessary for proper education and for supporting ethnic studies, this argument is both specious and hypocritical. Evidently, Bollinger thinks that people of different races giving similar arguments is diverse, while professors teaching from a non-liberal perspective threatens the norm of a university. Worse, Bollinger seems to hold that conservatives taking courses from like-minded professors threatens polarization, while predominantly minority students taking ethnic studies courses does not. Moreover any attempt of outside groups to question this status quo is a threat to academic freedom.
Welcome to the Bollinger’s Columbia, where orthodoxy is diversity and political conformity is an essential element of the First Amendment. Such an Orwellian statement would be dangerous enough coming from a leftist professor. It is unacceptable from a university president.

In an equally shocking turn of events, former university provost Jonathan Cole took castigated Bollinger for not doing enough to defend the university. Cole called on professors to defend the university and their colleagues from what he categorized as anti-intellectualism, intolerance, and repression during his speech at a panel discussion on the current controversy. The other panelists opposed outside intervention, but said that the university had a duty to hire more women.

Faculty Revolt Is Brewing at Columbia
http://www.nysun.com/article/11043

For Columbia professors, race class and gender rule, while academic freedom is a shield to protect an orthodoxy that bears no dissent. The university is sick and cannot fix itself.

Bollinger:

“One notable manifestation of these attacks is a national group called Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), founded in 2003, by the conservative activist David Horowitz, with members on about 150 campuses. At the core of SAF's campaign is a so-called "academic bill of rights," written by Horowitz and peddled to legislators across the country. Among other things, the bill calls for "fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives" in the hiring process; creating "curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences [that] reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate"; and inviting speakers with different points of view to campus. Horowitz's agenda has gained traction in statehouses across the country: legislation enacting variations of the academic bill of rights is moving ahead in 19 states.”

……………………

It is no wonder that Bollinger dislikes (fears?) Horowitz. Here is what Horowitz whose organization writes FrontPage had to say about Columbia’s MEALAC in 10/2003:

……………………

“That said, Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELAC) is anything but ‘mainstream' – it's so biased in favor of one and only one school of thought, the university's become known, after the infamous Palestinian school, as ‘Bir Zeit on the Hudson.' Before Khalidi was hired, MELAC already had three outspoken advocates for Palestine – Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, and George Saliba. These professors have all already made statements similar to or even more extreme than Khalidi's, often in class. For instance, in his lectures Hamid Dabashi reportedly compared Israeli attacks on Hamas militants in Jenin, which killed a total of fifty, to the Nazi Holocaust, which killed six million Jews. Joseph Massad has stated in a variety of forums that "a Jewish state is a racist state" that does not have the right to exist. And George Saliba, who teaches about Islamic science, has been criticized by his students for frequent off-topic political rants in class. All have cancelled their scheduled classes, normally attended and paid for by students of all political persuasions, so they could go attend pro-Palestinian political demonstrations. Many more professors in MELAC, while not as outspoken, have signed a divestment petition calling for Columbia to abandon its investments in Israel.”

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/810

Now which of the two, Horowitz or Columbia’s MEALAC sounds like they are “agenda” driven?

Bollinger:

“This notion -- that faculty members, not external actors, should determine professional standards for the academy -- remains, today, a powerful and widely accepted idea. It is the foundational principle of academic freedom.”

And

“Some (Edward Said suggested this in one of his books on the role of the public intellectual) will say that, since the university is free of the interests of power, or money, or ideological party, interests which skew one's judgment, the academy is a place that identifies with those out of power, with the oppressed or the victims of injustice, and in that way naturally speaks truth to power. Some will say that the university is nothing more than a haven for the simple and pure pursuit of ideas, where curiosity is the only guide and the spirit of play is the governing motivation.”

………………………...

But isn’t this high academic standard of no “external” influence,” “free of the interests of power, or money, or ideological party” incompatible with the reality of the funding of the Edward Said Chair now occupied by the head of MEALAC Rashid Khalidi:

…………………………

“Share a chair. Several readers have asked for the full list of donors to the Edward Said Chair, which Columbia released Friday. For some reason, it's not on Columbia's website. Here is the list:

Yusef Abu Khadra
Abdel Muhsen Al-Qattan
Ramzi A. Dalloul
Richard and Barbara Debs
Richard B. Fisher
Gordon Gray, Jr.
Daoud Hanania
Rita E. Hauser
Walid H. Kattan
Said T. Khory
Munib R. Masri
Morgan Capital & Energy
Olayan Charitable Trust
Hasib Sabbagh
Kamal A. Shair
Abdul Shakashir
Abdul Majeed Shoman
Jean Stein
United Arab Emirates

...............

Columbia owns up. The Columbia Spectator now tells the full story of Columbia's ethical and legal dereliction in concealing the donors of the Edward Said Professorship (incumbent: Rashid Khalidi). The names were finally disclosed on March 12. Reporter Chris Beam writes: "Kramer, who led the call for disclosure of the names, wrote in an e-mail that although individual donors might justifiably request anonymity, gifts from foundations and corporations should be revealed. 'But above all', he wrote, 'there are no circumstances—and I repeat that—no circumstances whatsoever, that justify the anonymity of a foreign government that has given to a university'." The government in question: United Arab Emirates, good for $200,000.

................

Palestinian millionaires. Sixteen of the donors to the Edward Said Professorship are individuals. Eight of these are trustees of the Geneva-registered Welfare Association, which gives to Palestinian welfare and development projects. The association, a wealthy club, has about a hundred active members, most of them prominent Palestinian businessmen. Edward Said was also a trustee. The Columbia Spectator article, cited immediately below, reports that Rita Hauser, a well-connected New York lawyer and philanthropist who happens to be Jewish, originally proposed the chair. Maybe, but these Palestinian millionaires look to me like the core of the initiative.

.................

And Columbia too. One of the donors of the Edward Said Professorship at Columbia is Ramzi Atta Dalloul. Once upon a time, he brokered arms deals between France and Iraq. When Saddam found out how much Dalloul was skimming off the top, he summoned him to Baghdad to demand his money back. Ken Timmerman's Death Lobby (p. 66): "The terrified Palestinian is said to have forked up $8 million in cash and may have made other 'contributions' to a secret Baath party fund held in a Swiss bank." (Here's more on Dalloul's Iraq deal from Said K. Aburish, who was in on it.) Dalloul was a generous fellow, according to Timmerman: "Besides making contributions to Arafat's Fatah Movement, Dalloul sought additional protection by making substantial payments to one of Arafat's rivals, the radical Palestinian leader George Habash."

..................

What about Columbia? Harvard University's Divinity School has decided to return that $2.5 million gift for an Islamic studies chair to the donor: the United Arab Emirates. Bottom line: the UAE is just too toxic to warrant the kind of legitimation Harvard confers. Remember: the UAE also contributed $200,000 toward the Edward Said Chair at Columbia, a fact concealed by Columbia until last spring. Maybe now's the time for Columbia to consider returning that UAE gift. Or are Columbia's standards not quite up to Harvard's?

http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2003_09_08.htm

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