THIS week, Rashid Khalidi starts his new job as the first Edward Said Chair of Middle East Studies at Columbia University, as well as director of the school's Middle East Institute. His arrival augments the school's already acute problems of extremism and intolerance on the Middle East. Examples of Columbia's problems: * Outspoken Palestinian advocates - openly antagonistic to Israel and Zionism - teach every course offered on the politics or history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC). * 78 percent of MEALAC faculty members signed a petition that compares...