The Clash of Ideas at Columbia (7 Letters)

To the Editor:

Re "Intimidation at Columbia" (editorial, April 7):

The essence of a university lies in not sanctioning professors or students for the content of their ideas - even when some find them offensive. Universities permit radical ideas because they demand rigorous proof before accepting ideas as facts.

Columbia does not operate in the way you describe. Individual departments do not have the "power to appoint and promote faculty," and therefore cannot have that power "wrested away" from them. The tenure review process is carefully designed to exclude a candidate's department from wielding any power over the final tenure decisions.

A close reading of the faculty committee's report would suggest that assertions against Joseph Massad, a professor in the Middle Eastern studies department, have not been proved and that sharp disagreement exists among students about whether the incidents in question even took place.

Akeel Bilgrami
Jonathan R. Cole
Jon Elster
New York, April 7, 2005
The writers are, respectively, a professor of philosophy; a professor of the university and a former provost; and a professor of social sciences at Columbia University.

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To the Editor:

"Intimidation at Columbia" conflates two different issues under the rubric of intimidation: charges that certain faculty members have behaved in an unprofessional manner toward students, and the ideas of those teaching Middle Eastern studies at Columbia.

Professors who do not treat students properly should be reprimanded. But for a student to encounter unfamiliar or even unpleasant ideas does not constitute intimidation.

Exposure to new ideas is the essence of education. Your call for the university to investigate "the quality and fairness of teaching" and "complaints about politicized courses" because students do not like the professors' ideas opens a Pandora's box that can never be closed.

Would you favor an investigation of every class on campus that deals with a controversial issue - for instance, whether I give enough class time to the pro-slavery argument, or whether economists present globalization in too flattering a light?

The autonomy of professors in designing and teaching their classes is the foundation of academic freedom.

Eric Foner
New York, April 7, 2005
The writer is a professor of history at Columbia University.

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To the Editor:

Your April 7 editorial about Columbia University doesn't address the real issue of the controversy: the threat to the integrity of the university by the intervention of organized outside agitators who are disrupting classes and programs for ideological purposes. These agitators pose a threat far more serious than anything Prof. Joseph Massad may or may not have done.

If university administrators and concerned citizens allow this behavior to continue, then the qualities that make American universities great - free inquiry and academic freedom - will be sacrificed to achieve an illusory calm.

Joan W. Scott
Princeton, N.J., April 7, 2005
The writer is chairwoman of the committee on academic freedom and tenure, American Association of University Professors.

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To the Editor:

While many of us at Columbia feel that the unsophisticated polemic scholarship and classroom behavior of several pro-Palestinian professors are deeply troubling, I question your assertion that "most student complaints were not really about intimidation."

As students, we cannot rightly expect that we will agree with every argument made by each professor we take classes from, but we should feel safe enough to critically evaluate our professors' arguments without fear of retribution (psychological or otherwise).

Indeed, the shame of the committee's report lies not in what the report didn't find, but in what it did: somewhere along the way, Columbia started looking out for itself and stopped looking out for its students.

Alexander Rolfe
New York, April 7, 2005
The writer is managing editor of Columbia Political Review.

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To the Editor:

Yes, the Columbia committee investigating charges of professorial intimidation decided that there was no evidence of anti-Semitism in any of the incidents it investigated.

But this committee, many of whose members have expressed anti-Israel views, has a different notion of anti-Semitism than many Jews do, on campus or off.

The Israel bashing surrounding the alleged incidents of intimidation is not the benign exercise of academic freedom whereby Israeli policies are criticized as part of instructive discussions about different political or social systems. Rather, Israel's very legitimacy to exist is denied. Its leadership and its army are reviled.

Should not these strident attacks make Jews uncomfortable? Railing against the very concept of Jewish statehood and Jewish self-defense is correctly seen as anti-Semitism.

Leonard M. Druyan
New York, April 7, 2005
The writer is a senior research scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University.

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To the Editor:

All people are biased. There is nothing wrong with faculty members at Columbia University having a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli policy bias, so long as they don't intimidate or punish students with opposing views.

The reality is that many professionals in this country, from corporate executives to politicians, bear an anti-Palestinian, pro-Israeli bias. We should welcome those with pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli policy bias as a counterbalance adding to the marketplace of free ideas.

Andrew M. Alul
Chicago, April 7, 2005

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To the Editor:

As you observe, the ad hoc faculty committee investigating alleged intimidation of students had a limited charge. Its charge was investigative, to assess the credibility of certain claims. Its charge was not judicial.

No one was "judged clearly guilty" of anything. Moreover, the report also concluded that at least one faculty member was unceasingly harassed and threatened, mostly by people not enrolled in his classes, many of whom were not members of the university.

As an American, a Jew, a scholar and a teacher, I find graver danger in such activities than in anything that has been documented concerning any Columbia faculty member.

Jonathan Arac
Pittsburgh, April 7, 2005
The writer is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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Middle East studies in the News

The Clash of Ideas at Columbia (7 Letters)

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