The Skeleton Comes out of Columbia's Closet

It turns out that the announcement, in May, of the previously anonymous sponsors of the Edward Said chair at Columbia University was just the beginning of the unraveling of Columbia's relationship with pro-Israel students.

Since it's inception in 2002, Columbia refused to reveal the sponsors of the endowed professorship. The first person to hold the Edward Said chair is Rashid Kahlidi, former professor at the University of Chicago and the type of guy who thanks Arafat in his books and compares the Palistinian situation to the Holocaust. Things did not look any better this past May when the list was Coumbia was found to have accepted a large sum of money from the United Arab Emirates. To give you an idea of the implication of this: Harvard refused a 2.5 million dollar endowment from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the President of the United Arab Emirates.

Now, Columbia students are coming out with claims of being verbally taunted and shut up by professors in Near Eastern Studies classes. The David Project, a pro-Israel think tank, has come out with a documentary about this called "Columbia Unbecoming." Originally I was going to post about how I thought it would be a grave mistake for Jewish students to try to get anti-Israel professors fired or reprimanded. However, this quote from the professor who garnered the most complaints from Zionist students changed my mind. Keep in mind that this Joseph Massad, the professor, refused to talk to the New York Sun. This is from the New York Times:

This is a propaganda film funded by a pro-Israel group as part of a racist witchhunt of Arab and Muslim professors," he said. "I have intimidated no one. Neither Columbia University nor I have ever received a complaint from any student.

Racist witch hunt? It saddens me to say that this will definetly be the prevailing viewpoint on this issue. I bet if a professor had said something similar about African Americans or Hispanics or even women (as David Bernstein points out) the campaign against him wouldn't be called "a racist witchunt." But, that's obvious.

Read the New York Sun article for free here.
A Columbia student involved in some these issues blogs here.