The recently established Edward Said Chair at Columbia has caused much controversy, in part because it is held by former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi and in part because the donors of the chair's estimated $4 million endowment have until now been kept secret. As Campus Watch has reported, it is highly irregular for the identity of academic chair donors to be concealed. It is all the more alarming that a university, naming a chair for one political activist and then awarding it to another political activist, would then prevent the public from knowing who had funded the chair. Columbia University...
