Columbia President feels the heat; admits receiving 15,000 emails opposing leftist professor

[thucydides]

Lee Bollinger seems confused about both the First Amendment and Academic Freedom. The First Amendment does not require that an institution continue to employ a person whose public comments and deportment constitute a negative reflection on it. It simply says that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." On Academic Freedom, what is protected is the right of the professor to make comments in his class relevant to the subject he is teaching. It does not extend to issuing statements on unrelated matters, or engaging in political advocacy, much less engaging in hate speech like De Genova did. See the website of the American Association of University Professors. Also, compare the statement of the University of California, which UC president Atkinson is now trying to revise, according to the website NonIndoctrination.com

[DensaMensa]

}Until people start withholding their checks these guys just won't get it.

Yep, once the money has been given, so has control. Look at the Ford Foundation (and a hundred others) where the intent of the conservative giver has been totally thwarted. Wonder how many of those wealthy givers would have taken their money and dumped it in the sea rather than see what happend as a result of their well-meaning "Foundations".

[Stop Legal Plunder]

BTW, Justice Ruth Ginsburg sat in the front row at Bollinger's lecture last night.

[xJones]

Is there any question-any question at all-that if deGenova had said, "We need a million Matthew Shepards" or "We need a million James Byrds" that he would have been gone that night?

Well said, you really nailed it.

[harpseal]

Since the advocacy of murder is inherently an incitement to violence and as such a violation of both academic freedom and the law Bolinger is on very shaky ground here when one includes campus speech codes and the suppression of some idealogical positions then one must rightly conclude Bolinger is only defending the scum ball professor because he actually hates Ameica and Freedom.

[Aliska]

but claimed they were protected by the First Amendment.

BS. If the guy had made comments in support of Christianity or creationism, he would be fired or severely disciplined.

Total hyposcrisy.

[Jim Noble]

>>one must rightly conclude Bolinger is only defending the scum ball professor because he actually hates Ameica and Freedom<<

Self-evident Truth.

[Hobsonphile]

Leftism on Campus ping!

If you would like to be added to the Leftism on Campus ping list, please
notify me via FReep-mail.

Regards...

[geedee]

I admire your passion and, as you say, "these jackass SOB's" don't see that the internet is the GREAT EQUALIZER and now us conservatives have the means to vent just as the liberals have used the newspapers, magazines, and TV outlets in the past.

Does Bollinger actually think we're going away? No way. All we'll do is turn up the heat.

IMHO, the leader of an organization who rewards bad behavior by doing nothing . . . IS WORSE THAN THE ONE GUILTY OF THE BAD BEHAVIOR! I suspect most FReepers agree and that's why Bollinger can expect another shi'ite-storm headed his way.

[ZULU]

"In response to an angry alumnus' question about the controversy and its negative impact on Columbia's reputation and alumni donations, Bollinger said that deGenova's remarks, which occured during a faculty-organized "teach-in" and included a claim that "U.S. patriotism is inseparable from imperial warfare and white supremacy," were "reprehensible," but claimed they were protected by the First Amendment."

Ohhh, REALLY???? Is the good professor saying that the First Amendment protects any speech on the job??

Tell that to Marge Schott, remember her??

This lying traitorous hypocrit admits to 15,000 letters. He should get twice as many, with as many as possible from decent graduates of Columbia who received diplomas when it was still an American University, telling this fool that they will no longer give a dime to an insitution of higher learning which provides an ant-American traitor with a podium to spout out venom at patriotic young Americans who risk their lives every day for him and whose shoes he is unfit to even shine.

[Hobsonphile]

Do Columbia's public documents- catalogues, etc.- declare Columbia an institution dedicated to academic freedom in the spirit of the First Ammendment? If so, this may be a legally binding contract and DeGenova (unfortunately) would have grounds for litigation.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Bolinger is only defending the...professor because he actually hates America and Freedom.

President Bollinger does favor freedom for some other than deGenova. Another comment he made in response to a question was that he is disappointed that recent immigration restrictions are reducing the numbers of Muslim students at Columbia and other schools.

[itsinthebag]

. . . Bollinger said that deGenova's remarks, which occured during a faculty-organized "teach-in" and included a claim that "U.S. patriotism is inseparable from imperial warfare and white supremacy," were "reprehensible," but claimed they were protected by the First Amendment.

When will people learn that with freedom of speech comes responsibility in what you say.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Columbia President Lee Bollinger's phone number is 212-854-9970. His email address is bollinger@columbia.edu

[Cicero]

Bllinger's predecessor, George Rupp, was fairly conservative, and a big improvement over Michael Sovern. But there was apparently little or nothing that he could do about the sad state of the humanities at Columbia. The rot has gone so far that only the most drastic action could possibly fix it.

I have several friends in the English departments at Columbia and Barnard. These used to be respectable departments, but in the past couple of decades the Columbia department (which always had problems with wicked faculty feuding) has really gone down the tubes. There is virtually no one left at all who is a real professor of English Literature, as opposed to some far-out theory or ideology.

Since Barnard is a kind of subordinate department, which gets less respect, it hasn't been as badly vitiated. There are still a few good people teaching there.

I'm most familiar with the Columbia Department of English and Comparative Literature, as it is called. But the rest of the humanities are pretty bad too, I believe. A determined president would have a very thankless task dealing with them. There are dozens of tenured villains--of who Edward Said is among the best known--and no one who could be trusted to make any decent new hires.

[The Toll]

Thanks to talk radio and FOX news we have finally broken 40 years of leftist dominated media. It is time to break the hold on academia also. We beat them at there own game and we can do it again. Promote conservative universities and refuse to send your children to these hives.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Although Columbia appears to have removed Nicholas de Genova's contact information from its on-line directory, it's still available from the department webpage:

Telephone: (212) 854-0199
email: npd18@columbia.edu

[Stop Legal Plunder]

de Genova on de Genova:

"The central concerns of my research and teaching include: labor and class formation, racialization, the production of urban space, nationalism, the politics of citizenship, and transnational social processes, especially migration.  My ethnographic research explores the social productions of racialized and spatialized difference in the experiences of transnational Mexican migrant workers within the space of the U.S. nation-state. 

More specifically, I examine transnational urban conjunctural spaces that link the U.S. and Latin America as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate U.S. nationalism, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law.  This work contributes to a reconceptualization of Latin American, Latino, and "American" (U.S.) Studies.  Likewise, I am interested in the methodological problems of ethnographic research practice and the limits of anthropological disciplinary forms of knowledge and modes of representation."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/anthropology/faculty.htm#DE%20GENOVA

[Zebra]

Bollinger said it was vital for a university to stand up for academic freedom and that taking such a stand required protecting the right of academics to express their opinions, even if such includes advocating "murder," as he described deGenova's position. Bollinger acknowledged that such a stand was costly......

So costly, in fact, that if I was on the Board of Trustees of Columbia, I'd be shopping for a new President. I doubt Columbia will recover from the effects of this for a long time.

I understand the need for and enthusiastically support diversity of ideas and the free and open exhange of those ideas, even unpopular ones. However, there is a reasonable decorum that even permissive academia must recognize, and De Genova clearly stepped beyond it. For Bollinger to acknowledge that De Genova's comments were tantamount to advocacy of murder and to suggest that the open advocacy of murder is protected at Columbia is repulsive and incongruous with any reasonable theory of academic freedom of expression.

Anyway, Columbia can do what it wants. It will feel the consequences big time, though. I am not an alum; if I was, Columbia would have seen its last dollar from me until Bollinger is gone. I am, however, the father of three kids, at least two of whom will meet or exceed the academic requirements of Columbia. They won't be enrolling there.

[Stop Legal Plunder]

Thanks to talk radio and FOX news we have finally broken 40 years of leftist dominated media.

Interesting that you should bring this up. Bollinger devoted about 1/4 of his remarks to Columbia's journalism school. Although it is (and has been for decades) the top-ranked journalism school in the country, Bollinger last year commissioned a 34-member (!) committee to discuss what to do to make the school more relevant.

My own view is that the unofficial name of the group should be: "The Committee to Decide how to Respond to Rush and Rupert."