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That organization's 25-minute film Columbia Unbecoming has been primarily responsible for the subsequent local, national, and international coverage of charges that some professors in the university's Middle East studies department abuse their academic freedom by intimidating students who don't agree with them. Ever since the accusing students went public with their criticism of the professors - in part with the encouragement and financial support of groups outside the university - a host of Columbia students, alumni, trustees, Jewish organizational officials and even a US congressman have demanded that Columbia rein in its delinquent teachers. Faced with the growing controversy, university officials have met with aggrieved students, set up an ad hoc committee to review the allegations until a more permanent one can be established and pledged to overhaul Columbia's grievance process for students charging professors with inappropriate academic conduct. PRESIDENT BOLLINGER: “THIS IS A COMPLETELY NEW PROCESS ,” "THIS IS a completely new process that has been set up," Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, told The Jerusalem Post. "This is a very important, careful, delicate process to think about behavior in the classroom." But many critics are already bringing charges that Columbia University’s appointed committee to investigate the student claims of bias, racism and intimidation is totally tainted. The critics claim that said committee is stacked with faculty members who are pro-Arab and extremely hostile to Israel and that some members of the infamous committee are “signatories to a petition demanding that Columbia divest from companies that sell military equipment to the Jewish state - and who have personal relationships with the professors they have been asked to investigate.” The Jerusalem Post reported that at least one former Columbia dean, Robert Pollack, a biology professor, said the university has already botched its handling of the issue by letting it fester in public view and not making clear what is and what is not inappropriate conduct for professors. "The response has not been clear because the different groups here have not been asked, nor told, or expected to do their jobs properly," Pollack said. "That was an administrative lapse that incomprehensibly continues today, two years later, with the appointment of a faculty committee to consider, in public, the students' charges. This abrogation of administrative responsibility has hurt Columbia. The principles at stake at Columbia go beyond the problems in the university's Middle East studies department. At issue is the university's academic reputation, the principle of academic freedom and the question of whether McCarthyite tactics are being used to silence critics of Israeli policies. "We will not allow intimidation of students, but we must also defend academic freedom," Bollinger said. "Pursuing one can put stress on the other. I think it's inevitable." EQUALLY DAMNING CHARGES…. The controversy at Columbia has blended together two separate but probably equally damning charges: 1-The professors of Columbia University are biased against Israel; 2- Columbia’s professors have acted improperly toward students who are sympathetic to Israel. The dilemmatic distinction between those two damning charges has not always been clear.
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Observers claim that the issue of anti-Israel bias at Columbia is the more vital one. Critics on both sides of the fence, each one with a subjective version, students and eyewitness accounts of particular inside and outside classroom events remain subject to speculation, rhetoric, interpretation, sketchy recollections and lack of verifiable evidence. Yet, students ascertain that those incidents DID HAPPEN! DANIEL PIPES: “THIS IS ABOUT POLITICS. COLUMBIA HAS A DEEPLY BIASED FACULTY.” "This is about politics," says Daniel Pipes, founder of CAMPUS WATCH, a pro-Israel group that monitors Middle East activities and studies departments for political bias. "Columbia has a deeply biased, radical faculty in this area," Pipes said of the MEALAC department. "This is extraordinary given the fact that the university is supposed to be a place where there is debate and learning. I would say it's the place where you have the least debate in the country." Rabbi Charles Sheer, who recently retired as Columbia's Jewish chaplain after 34 years, says the larger problem is that Columbia students are being taught distorted views of the Middle East. "It's an academic question," Sheer says. "It's not that easy for the university to clarify whether the students were intimidated. It ends up being a kind of 'he said, she said' thing. But that's not the point," he says. "The point is you have to step back and see if the future State Department members, who are going to be trained at Columbia - because many of them are trained at our university - are they getting an education that's a balanced one?" According to Shanker, a MEALAC major, the bias was most obvious in Massad's classroom. "If you counted the number of times that Massad called Israel a Jewish supremacist racist state, it's unbelievable. He teaches that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the dissolution of the State of Israel," Shanker says. "The focus is on the intimidation, but people should be focusing on the fact that he's teaching things that aren't true." Mr. Bollinger admitted that Columbia has lot of work to do when presenting the full scenario of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East is major issue on the academic discussion landscape.
NEW UNIVERSITY CHAIR FOR MODERN ISRAELI AND JEWISH STUDIES Already, President Lee C. Bollinger stated that , he brought new faculty and added new programs focusing on Israel, raised funds for the endowment of a new university chair in modern Israeli and Jewish studies. Bollinger has already invited scholars and academicians from Israel to come teach at Columbia, said university officials.
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ALLEGED MISUSE OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH TO HURT THE JEWS! “Columbia Unbecoming” is a documentary which honestly and cleverly raised significant questions about the misuse of academic freedom, insufficient academic integrity in teaching about the Middle East, student intimidation, and how professors use the classroom as a political platform to diffuse and preach their own political views and geo-political theories. Jewish students at Columbia are seriously embarrassed, humiliated and chagrined by a series of articles against everything Jewish, which were written and published by Arab, Muslim and Black students at Columbia, Also, they are enormously disturbed by alleged anti-Israel and anti-Jews statements issued publicly by Arab professors at Columbia. The documentary explained that, the anti-Israel campaign on college campuses differs greatly from legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies. This racist campaign hides behind the language of human rights and national liberation to demonize Israel, Israelis, and their supporters. It includes the national divestment movement and promotes a one-sided and misleading view of the Middle East conflict that favors Israel-bashing over fair and honest discussion. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S INDIVIDUAL PROFESSORS DROVE ANIMUS TOWARD ISRAELThe documentary went on accusing Columbia’s faculty and individual professors, who too often, drive animus toward Israel and pro-Israel viewpoints on campus by using their positions to promote a narrow political agenda that clashes with free and open inquiry. Sometimes such animus is directed at students who dissent from the professors’ political point of view. The documentary raised fundamental questions about liberal arts education and the use of the classroom for the purpose of political propaganda against the Jews and Israel, quite often, initiated by Arab and Muslim professors, including Christian Arab teachers. It did document a certain bias and intimidation toward Israel and its supporters on campus and by the same token, it proposed constructive ways to aid in working with students, faculty, alumni and administrators to change the hostile environment.TENURED PROFESSOR DAN MIRON: “FACULTY ABUSE OF STUDENTS IS A LONG EXISTING PROBLEM…GOING ON FOR YEARS.”The most alarming part of the documentary is the section which revealed disturbing news about a dozen professors identified as pro-Israel agreed to give off-the-record interviews but declined to appear in the film. These faculty members reinforced the students’ concerns and agreed that the problem of departmental bias was serious, but those who had yet to receive tenure equated participating in the video with "career suicide," and most of those who were already tenured claimed that it would jeopardize their credibility as scholars. However, tenured MEALAC Professor Dan Miron told the press that
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faculty abuse of students is a “long existing problem ... going on for years,” and that students told him—on a weekly basis—about being humiliated in class. Professor Dan Miron, a scholar of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Columbia's Middle East Studies Department, commenting on the charges of anti-Israel bias among some of his colleagues, told The New York Sun: "Israelis are put to a test that is not applied to anyone else. You will not hear any murmur about the people of Sudan but . . . Israel is singled out in a way that is racist." The Middle East Studies Department at Columbia University have become a question mark to many students. Ariel Beery, a student in that department, told the The New York Sun's Jacob Gershman about the anti-Israel, anti-Jews professors teaching in that notorious department: "They teach everything in the context of one special, small struggle, where there are 23 countries out there where minorities are being oppressed, where women are bound to their homes, where homosexuals are put in jail. They're ignoring the rest of the Middle East in favor of a small dimension of it." COLUMBIA’S OFFICIALS IGNORE THE COMPLAINTS OF JEWISH STUDENTS.Columbia’s Jewish students reported that many students could not lodge complaints through the appropriate channels at Columbia and arranged a press conference as a last resort after six months of private meetings. Columbia University’s highest officials have acknowledged that the grievance policies in place were inadequate and provided no effective recourse for students with complaints of intimidation by faculty members. Moreover, the students who have spoken out against professors state that the officials charged with handling such grievances either ignored them or directed them to other officials who were unresponsive.COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S PRESIDENT: “THE COMMITTEE WILL NOT INVESTIGATE ANYONE’S POLITICAL OR SCHOLARLY BELIEFS.”Two Jewish students met with Columbia Dean Kathryn Yatrakis to complain about Professor Saliba and how the dean effectively ignored their complaint suggesting that perhaps their Jewish upbringing may have affected their reaction to the professor’s behavior. In the Spring of 2004, President Bollinger appointed a faculty committee to investigate bias in the MEALAC Department. The committee headed by Professor Vincent Blassi heard testimonies from students and the director of Hillel, Rabbi Charles Sheer. The committee did not submit a written report, only an oral one, and it concluded that they had “not found claims of bias or indoctrination.” Columbia University’s administration did not issue a response to the students’ concerns. Columbia University’s president said “The committee will not investigate anyone's political or scholarly beliefs." PROFESSOR’S ALLEGED ABUSIVE BEHAVIORThe idea of documenting biases by some of Columbia’s professors was initially generated by a student at a meeting organized by The David Project, in October 2004. The David Project came to Columbia University to meet with 30 students who were upset with professors’ abusive behavior directed at students with pro-Israel viewpoints. Each student agreed to be interviewed and video-recorded. Some asked that their names be withheld or their faces obscured, and their requests were honored. The students were deeply involved in the six-month internal effort to deal with the challenge of student grievance procedures within Columbia. This six month effort included meetings and viewings of the film by alumni, donors, faculty, trustees, and senior members of the University administration including the Provost. Finally, it was the students’, not The David Project’s, decision to publicize the issue after they were ignored by the administration and after the public disclosure of the existence of the video by the President of Barnard College, the sister school to Columbia.
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM The history of American Academia taught us that traditionally, academic freedom in America was never fully understood, nor clearly observed by faculty members, boards of trustees, administrators and students, as well. Long-lasting disputes, rhetoric and clashes over academic freedom have pitted academic thinkers, politicians, state boards of education, governors, donors, and schools’ administrators against professors who expressed personal opinions and political points of view. Especially those teachers who taught according to what they believed in and or as saw fit. But nowadays and increasingly, it is the schools’ students who are screaming murder and invoking academic freedom. The examples are abundant and the more illustrative ones, are those which came from the students of Columbia University and the University of North Carolina. Students claim biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination. In the past, it was the activists on liberal campuses who defended the importance of "diversity" and freedom of speech. They pressed for curriculum changes and students-teachers participation in ideas, forums and exchanges of points of views. Ironically enough, “conservatives”, now, are adopting much of the same principles, language and concerns. By the same token, academic freedom structure and guidelines were traditionally crafted and cited in order to protect students who were considered “left-learning” students. Protecting students from what and from who or whom? Protecting them from punishment for challenging their teachers and disagreeing with them on vital and controversial issues such as, the topics of Vietnam, America’s neutrality before and during the very beginning of the second world war, American tigers-flyers in occupied China, the Franco’s Spain war, America’s invasion of Iraq, the Canal El Suez conflict, Israel, Britain and France attacks on port Said in Egypt, the infamous McCarthyism, et al…Those same guidelines are now being invoked by conservative students who support Bush’s war in Iraq! Professors are deeply concerned with the issue of academic freedom on campus. The Associated Press reported that, at the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sue over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs. In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college says a teacher received a death threat. And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators. The three episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses. “ANTIDOTE TO LIBERAL DOMINANCE” The CNN reported that those behind the trend call it an antidote to the overwhelming liberal dominance of university faculties. But many educators, while agreeing students should never feel bullied, worry that they just want to avoid exposure to ideas that challenge their core beliefs -- an essential part of education. Some also fear teachers will shy away from sensitive topics, or fend off criticism by "balancing" their syllabuses with opposing viewpoints, even if they represent inferior scholarship. "Faculty retrench. They are less willing to discuss contemporary problems and I think everyone loses out," said Joe Losco, a professor of political science at Ball State Univer-
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sity in Indiana who has supported two colleagues targeted for alleged bias. "It puts a chill in the air." Conservatives say a chill is in order. Indeed, there is an alarming and troubling aspect of these debates. Professors claim that students are trying to dictate what they don't want to be taught on campuses. And students claim that many professors are opinionated and biased! "Even the most contentious or disaffected of students in the '60s or early '70s never really pressed this kind of issue," said Robert O'Neil, former president of the University of Virginia and now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Does this academic metamorphosis apply to faculty and concerned Jewish students at Columbia University?
JEWISH STUDENTS BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BUT… Columbia’s Jewish students believe that academic freedom is a precious cornerstone of a democracy that should be cherished and upheld and their honest concerns about fighting racism and exposing the anti-Jews and anti-Israel sentiments on campus, is in no way working to suppress this important freedom. Jewish students along with The David Project agree that universities should be very concerned with protecting free speech; this includes the right of professors to offer courses that take a view of the Middle East that is not consistent with that of the pro-Israel community. However, universities also have a responsibility to ensure that all views can be articulated in an atmosphere conducive to enlightenment rather than one of pressure or fear. An environment that is hostile to the presentation of legitimate alternative points of view is troubling precisely because it does not allow for the kind of free expression the public reasonably expects from a university. Professors who permit expression of only those views with which they agree make a mockery of academic freedom.
ADVOCATING THE ELIMINATION OF ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE Supporters of the MEALAC department have evaded dealing with the real issues of bias and intimidation by mislabeling criticisms as attacks on academic freedom. This is simply an obfuscation of what is actually happening at Columbia University, furiously claims a great number of angry students. Of course professors have every right to voice their opinions but this same right must extend to their students.
PROFESSOR MASSAD: “ISRAEL IS A JEWISH AND A RACIST STATE.” Those professors at Columbia University who allegedly are advocating the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state are entitled to be heard, even if they represent only a small sliver of the wide range of opinions about the future of Israel. But, when a scholar and a professor like the “learned” Professor Massad allegedly describes Israel as a “Jewish and a racist state” and teaches that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the dissolution of the State of Israel, the freedom of speech become a mockery and a dangerous tool. For the spirit of liberty and the essence of the freedom of speech are built upon the understanding of TRUTH, not malicious intentions and false statements. Especially when a so-called advocate of freedom of speech like Massad et al have allegedly and continuously silenced opposing views in their classrooms and beyond. The practice by certain professors of “advocacy teaching,” which focuses exclusively on a particular perspective, a biased view of a very complex Middle East conflict, while suppressing dissenting views IS DANGEROUS and DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. |
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A senior departmental colleague of mine, Dan Miron, who votes on my promotion and tenure, has recently expressed open support for this campaign of intimidation based on hearsay. Indeed with this campaign against me going into its fourth year, I chose under the duress of coercion and intimidation not to teach my course this year. It is my academic freedom that has been circumscribed. But not only mine. The Columbia courses that remain are all taught from an Israel-friendly angle. MASSAD: “718 INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS AND STUDENTS DEFENDED ME.”
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HAS BECOME A HOSTILE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT Students at Columbia claim that the –Masaad-Shanker’s incident is not “an isolated one.” Students told the media “Week after week over the past several months, a growing number of Columbia students have come forward to detail charges that classes in the school's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department (MEALAC) have become a forum for anti-Israel vitriol. They say professors routinely use their positions to promote anti-Israel activism, discourage free intellectual discourse on the Israeli-Arab conflict and denigrate students sympathetic to Israeli policies. The result, they say, is a hostile academic environment in which it is impossible for students to express their opinions freely.” COLUMBIA’S PROFESSOR: “THE PALESTINIAN IS THE NEW JEW, AND THE JEW IS THE NEW NAZI.” On Columbia University’s campus, there are disturbing stories about how Arab and Muslim professors intimidate their Jewish and Israeli students, and how those very professors orchestrate campaigns and demonstrations against Israel on and off campus. Columbia’s students told us about a Muslim professor who asked an Israeli student "how many Palestinians have you killed," and about another
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Muslim professor who took his class to participate in a stormy pro-Palestinian demonstration. The most appalling one is about an Arab professor teaching in the classroom, dogmatic political philosophies against the Jews as people and as nation. In one of his inflammatory statements, the Arab professor stated: "The Palestinian is the new Jew, and the Jew is the new Nazi."
MORE ARAB AND MUSLIM PROFESSORS’ ALLEGED ATTACKS ON JEWS AND ISRAEL Aside from Massad, a fleet of anti-Jews professors at Columbia University is parading day by day, before the very eyes of Jewish and Israeli students. Hamid Dabashi, referred to as “the Hagop Kevorkian of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” is a professor of Iranian Studies, the chair of the MEALAC department, and the director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. and George Saliba, a professor of history of Islamic science, have been constantly accused of bias and intimidating Jewish, Israeli and pro-Israel student. Both, accused professors and their academic defenders pretend that “ those behind the charges are McCarthyites, and their intent is to silence the voice of truth and academic freedom.” And they go on to say: “those accusers intent on stifling any criticism of Israel by labeling critics of Israeli policies anti-Semites.” Columbia alumna, Madiha Tahir, a leader of a group calling itself the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Academic Freedom at Columbia, said “This is about politics and the stifling of the debate and discussion on the question of Palestine and Israel."
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM IS FLAWED Columbia’s Jewish students hoped that Columbia will work to “resolve the relevant concerns”, but unfortunately, the “ad-hoc committee assembled to deal with this issue is flawed in its composition”. The membership of the committee was strongly influenced by Nicholas Dirks, who signed a petition last year calling on Columbia to divest its holdings from companies selling hardware to Israel. Professor Dirk’s wife is a professor. According to the reasonably angry and concerned Jewish students, all five committee members are either personally or professionally close to the professors named by students as hostile. Lisa Anderson served as a dissertation advisor to Joseph Massad, who acknowledges her contributions in his book "Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan." Two of the committee members, Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives Jean Howard and comparative literature professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, also signed the divestment from Israel petition last year. Another member of the committee is a severe critic of Israel and has suggested that the rise of global anti-Semitism is Israel’s fault. Finally, the remaining committee member served as the Vice President of Arts and Science at the time these incidents took place. Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice wrote “Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, facing the first major challenge of his two years in that position, is not likely—for the rest of his tenure and beyond—to forget the David Project.
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BOLLINGER IS CAREFUL President Bollinger is careful to point out that the Columbia University’s university committee will not consider statements, remarks or actions made by the accused professors outside the academic walls. He said: “Professors are citizens too." However, he promised that the university shall improve its channeled manners in effectively dealing with students' complaints and reported academic intimidation. "Faculty widely and students widely have confidence in the institution and the ad hoc process that's been set up. We are hopeful that when there are concerns, students will find coming to us the best way to proceed." many have relationships with the professors they're charged with investigating. CAN WE TRUST BOLLINGER’S APPOINTED COMMITTEE?
The David Project’s people don’t buy it. "It's biased," Goldwasser said. "Almost all the members of Bollinger’s committee have close personal relationships with the professors in question. How can they judge their own colleagues - their own friends?" Susan Brown, a spokeswoman for Columbia, said that review committee members' political views are irrelevant: their job is to review and investigate students’ claims of academic malfeasance, not political ideology. And their personal relationships with the accused professors would never influence their work. These people were carefully selected based on their professionalism, their stature as scholars both within the Columbia community and outside, and their experience with and sensitivity to student and faculty concerns…There's a long tradition in the academy of faculty taking on the responsibility of reviewing the teaching and professionalism of their peers. That's how it's done, and it has worked pretty well as a widespread practice. I'm sure if it came to a time where they had to recuse themselves, they would," she added. WHAT CONSTITUTES ABUSE OR INTIMIDATION?
That is THE question! The university committee, will start looking into the allegations, accusations and charges in spring 2005. The committee shall be faced with a legal dilemma. Perhaps a juridical debate? An academic jurisprudence! The committee has to define what is abuse, what is intimidation, what is bias, and what is racism? Perhaps?
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The committee has to study, analyze and assess strong personal remarks and socio-political opinions of faculty members. Sometimes, the same personal remarks and dogmatic opinions of a professor might infuriate some students, and by the same token delight others. So where do we stand? The Post wonders whether the review and findings of the committee would and could create new academic behavioral criteria and new code of ethics on campus or sink accusers and supporters in an abyss of additional confrontations and heated debates ad infinitum. It is hard to tell. One could say, intimidation is in the eye of the beholder. "What we're talking about here is drawing lines…I've really defined as well as can be defined the responsibility of the faculty member in the classroom.", said Columbia’s president. And The Post wonders again: “But can definitions work when it comes to conduct that is open to interpretation? Bollinger says he's aware of the difficulties. "Some things we may say 'it's just too dangerous to inquire into them' because we will lose more than we will gain about what we value, and some things we may say we must inquire into them because we will lose more than we will gain if we don't." Bollinger sated: “The path one chooses, depends in part on how carefully one can identify the problem. In the case of intimidation and abuse of students, it is so much a violation about what we believe in, it is so destructive to the mission of the university, that it really is the only path we can take…We cannot stand by and let that behavior go by." To play it safe, Bollinger asked attorney Floyd Abrams, a freedom-of-speech expert, to serve as an adviser to Columbia's investigative committee. Abrams issued the following statement: "To make sure that the hearing is fair and could not be challenged by someone anywhere in any court...It's not that anyone's threatening to go to court, but it seems to me that if you want to do this, you want to do it right.” WHERE IS THE FAIR ASSESSMENT?
The personal philosophical and political opinions and beliefs of Columbia’s accused professors clash with the personal sentiments, honest feelings, and strong convictions of the students. To a certain degree, both are right and both are wrong, and to a greater degree, both could become catastrophic to themselves, if they allow hate and prejudice to manipulate and influence their judgment, and kill any hope for reconciliation and a better future for both, The Israeli and the Palestinian people. Who is the fool who can claim that political problems and headaches can be solved, treated and cured through academia and by silencing the other party? Those who are right wingers are certain that the media and academia have already condemned Israel and that the Jews are at fault. And those who are left wingers claim that any criticism of the State of Israelis is ipso facto considered as anti-Semitism. How ironic, the situation is, for both Israelis and Palestinians are Semites and cousins. Yes, we can have two different wings. But we need them both, we need to keep them both in sync, harmony and in peace with each other, so we could fly, fly, fly so high over the clouds and far away from human decadence and injustice…and touch the face of God… Written by MDL
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