Bollinger: No Plan to Reprimand De Genova (Freep Needed)

Columbia Daily Spectator ^ | April 10, 2003 | Megan Greenwell

[wildbill]

Let me tell you what all this controversy is going to do:

The liberal academic profession is going to rally around De Genova--even if some of them deplore his remarks--because of the issue of academic freedom. They will make a martyr out of him and a journeyman PC professor will become a renowned and TENURED professor.

You read it here first--from a Columbia grad. By the way, this would have happended if he'd been a professor from the New Mexico State College of Psychiatry and Body and Fender Repair.

[onedoug]

Once upon a time I liked academia, and liked to where university Ts and sweatshirts.

Never again, but for ARMY and Christian colleges.

Columbia.... Pttuugh!

[cpprfld]

Congress could do more than just send a letter, maybe cut off funding of the university.

[CdMGuy]

Columbia has a Board of Trustees. However, if you saw the members, you would realize that for the most part, they are a bunch of left wingers. As for Lee Bollinger, he has been president of Columbia for a couple of years. Prior to that, he was president of the Univ. of Mich. - the school with the law school affirmative action case before the US Supreme Court.

As for Columbia firing this guy, money talks. The only way he goes is if they lose out on Federal funds, or high roller alumni donators send a clear message. Otherwise, Bollinger will sit tight. Hell, he probably agrees with De Genova.

I graduated from their Graduate School of Business in 1967. I stopped donating in the early 70s because my business school donations were being re-directed to liberal arts and other schools that could not pay their own way. At that time, the dean of the B-school resigned in protest of how the university was taking away B-school donations.

[Steelerfan]

Everyone is phrasing this is a question of accademic freedom. Isn't this really a question about his intelligence and fitness to be a professor? Fine he disagrees with the war and while I think he is completely wrong about that it probably is not enough to terminate him. It is his bizarre statements about the history of this country that should get him fired Anyone with such a factually inaccurate, warped sense of history is not qualified to teach othes. He is free to believe whatever he wants but when his beliefs are completely at odds with reality he is no more deserving of his job then your average psychopath. Columbia probably would not hesitate to fire a professor who taught that the pyramids were built by space aliens on the grounds that he has the accademic freedom to do so. Why are they hesitating now, except that deep down they are sympathetic to this professor's beliefs?
If you substituted any "victim" group for "soldiers" in his statements do you think anyone would be seeking to protect his job under the guise of "accademic freedom?"

Finally, I agree with you on Bollinger. He was the UofM law school president before he became president of the university and put most of the admissions procedures in place.

[Lady Eileen]

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