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Yesterday's Daily News cover story was a feature about how Columbia University was turning into a "Poison Ivy", what with some professors questioning Israel's right to be in the Middle East. This stems from student claims that certain professors are especially harsh in classrooms, humiliating them and intimidating them. Now, while there definitely may be something behind how much a professor's or student's views can be protected under the First Amendment (let alone respected), Gothamist wonders if the Daily News is taking advantage of the global climate (heightened fear about the Middle East and Arabs) to push this story [disclaimer: Gothamist did attend Columbia]. We're a little frustrated, because some of the story mishes and mashes between claims of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, which are two different (though sometimes related) things. And, from coverage in Columbia's student paper, The Columbia Spectator, it seems like students are still signing up for classes. As for having professors who intimidate you and have different opinions, that's the Socratic method and motivation for you to know your stuff.
The last time Gothamist can remember an incident with NYC professor and claims of anti-Semitism was in 1991, when City College professor Leonard Jeffries gave a speech saying Jews were central to the slave trade and called a fellow professor "the head Jew at City College." And Gothamist must admit - our issues with Columbia being inhospitable had more to do with the dorms than the professors.
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the situation at columbia seems like while all these professors embrace diversity and believe that diversity is a good thing. the underlying idea that diversity of IDEAS is HEALTHY fails to register in their minds. it's a shame too.
the middle eastern studies department at columbia seems to have gone a little off the rails. calling israel an apartheid state, and claiming the israelis have exploited the holocaust, well, that's an incredibly biased, unnuanced opinion. don't we depend on our scholars to present a fair, impartial reading of situations like this?
i'm certainly not comfortable giving money to our alma mater with this stuff going on. i don't want my money fueling departments or professors that hate me or my people in israel. i'd be comfortable if they department was hiring people with opinions on both sides of the issue, but that's clearly not the case. so until that changes, my money is going to stuyvesant high school, and not columbia.
"calling israel an apartheid state, and claiming the israelis have exploited the holocaust."
surely that's a lie, right? right.
the zionist movement started long before the holocaust. if anyone wants to point fingers, they can also point to the UK, the colonial power who had control of Palestine and thought it was their land to divide and give away.
these "filmmaker" students seem sneaky and manipulative - it's honorable to challenge someone's opinion, even angrily, but it's deplorable to surreptitiously tape people you disagree with and then suggest that their opinions are taboo and try to get them fired. hello stalin.
I went to a very challenging private school (University of Chicago) and I explored not only my own views and comprehension of the world through the teachings of certain literary works but also the views presented in lectures by my professors. I didn't have to subscribe to the opinions of my professor to obtain some of the best learning experiences, because I was their to learn not how I should think but to learn how and what OTHERS in academia think so that I could learn to exist and engage in that world. In fact, it may be what is needed as a student, a great way to challenge yourself, by going through an intense workload of social issue seminars, such as gender studies, or African-American History.
As far as saying that the issue of Israeli-Palestine should be off-topic in a top school is ludicruous if you believe in getting the best education from a top institution. Most of the students that go to liberal colleges are in fact conservative in thought or at least come from that background. What they are getting though from such an education is a wider view of the intellectual world and being able to not only debate these ideas well, but form a better understanding of them by engaging their many contested and uncontested aspects such that exist in the Israel-Palestine issue.
I think it's putting a veil of intolerance and social fear, so deep and so far, if our own institutions of higher learning are now a target to censor. They have been the bastions of diverse and unspoken discussions of such topics as wars and peace, of social thought and social action.
Ludicrous I say...I doth think people protest too much....or not enough.
As far as a parent's or students own view on Israel-Palestine and how they should cary their life? ... If you want to FIGHT rather than DISCUSS the contested issue, go join the war efforts, why enjoy peace and have free and open debate if you are CONCERNED so much.
I do think Manhattan and the wonderful institutions of learning in America have more to offer than a forum on Israel-Palestine issues.
While there is never an excuse for a professor to humiliate or intimidate a student for expressing their views (after all, what's a university for, anyway?), the DN has been on Columbia's case for a while over this. One wonders, after reading some of the DN's editorials (re: Mort Zuckerman) and columns (re: Zev Chafets) lately, if in fact it is the DN that's pursuing an agenda (re: anti-Arab), rather than attempting to expose Columbia's.
i think tim n. hit it on the head. isn't the daily news owned by an actively pro-israel jew? i'm asking... is this not true?
Zef Chafets of the Daily News is disgustingly anti-Arab. I can't recall a single columnist in the Daily News that has ever had anything good to say about the Palestinians or is in the least bit critical of Israel's policies, except maybe Richard Cohen. Why is it if you criticize Israel, you're immediately branded an Anti-Semite? Isn't that stifling intellectual debate? I'm Chinese, doesn't that mean I can go around calling people anti-chinese if they criticize the Chinese government?
If you buy into the rightness of a Jewish state on Palestinian soil after a 2000-year absence, you really ought to get up and move the hell out of the Western Hemisphere - and make room for its rightful Native American owners, deprived of their ancestral lands only a quarter as long as the Jews, to establish a state (or states) of their own here.
I'm a tolerant person, with an ear for both Zionists and Palestinians. But I have no tolerance for double standards.
honestly, i believe both sides have a right to some of the land, and the only equitable solution is one that creates two states. some make that argument based on historical events, but i don't care about any of that stuff. i'm a pragmatist. both the palestinians and the jews are there, and they will be there until the end of time, or until one side destroys the other.
all of my friends, palestinian and israeli, and every reasonable academic and politican that i can think of have converged on the two-state solution as reasonable and reasonably just. for columbia to staff a department with radical palestinian supporting academics with views that harken back to the "push the jews into the sea" days... well, that just seems like a poor choice. and certainly not a choice i'm going to support with my annual fund contributions.
Um, Israel IS an Apartheid state.
and another thing- the jews are on like 2% of the arab lands in the middle east. the indians have 55 million acres of land in the united states, or about 2.5% of the land in America. so honestly, the jews aren't asking for any more than the indians- in fact, they are asking for less.
interesting fact: israel is 5.5 million acres- nearly 1/10th the size of the indian lands in the USA.
oh jake, that just sounds so desperate. it's pretty convenient to dump all arab lands into one big lot, don't you think? how much of palestinian land are the jews hijacking to impose their religious state? you should just stick to your 'pragmatic solution' argument. it's a lot more convincing.
Jake's argument is neither desperate nor convenient. There has never been a Palestinian State -- it was Greek, Roman, Arab, Jewish, Ottoman, British, etc. The "Palestinian" identity is a thoroughly modern concept, created in 1948, if 1967. That does not necessarily mean that a two-state solution isn't just, but Jake was logical in "lumping" all "Arab" land together.
And, hate to break it to you, but Israel is not a religious state at all. Which middle eastern state actually allows women to vote, gays to live openly, and Hawks and Doves to duke it out in transparent political system? Israel. It is the only state in the area to have a constituional democracy, and to have a multi-cultural electorate with (gasp!
It is the only state in the area to have a constituional democracy, and to have a multi-cultural electorate, including(gasp!
i think you are all moving away from the real controversy here. it's not who is the rightful owner of the land (palestine/israel) and it's not whether or not israel is an apartheid state. those are all opinions and that's fine.
the real controversy here is that the diversity of ideas is being killed off and censored by these very professors. that's the issue at hand. students that support israel (they are entitled to this opininion, no?) are being threatened and humiliated by their so called intellectual leaders. that does not foster an open and learning environment. in fact, that reminds me more of stalin than the censorship of said professors.
you can't have your cake and eat it too. what if these professors were adamant in saying that slavery was a good thing? would all of you defending them continue defending their free speech? i doubt it. and that's what's at stake here. an open and safe intellectual environment for both students AND professors. as things stand now, that does NOT exist.
I feel strongly that Gothamist should stick to food and movies and not become a political blog.
I've spent many hours in Columbia's libraries, and I'm often shocked at the anti-Semitism (and anti-Americanism) there. This has been well chronicled in The Sun (Gothamist should read it!) and not just the Daily News.
Columbia is the campus where a professor would wish on us "a million Mogadishus." (That is, "Death to America." From a professor!)
Columbia not only hasn't stopped stuff like that, but it actively promotes it by its new hirings.
I'm most disturbed that Gothamist is so eager to parse "anti-Zionism" from "anti-Semitism." (We're not against Jews--we just don't want them to live anywhere!) In reality, it's almost always the same thing.
"I feel strongly that Gothamist should stick to food and movies and not become a political blog... yet here's my political spiel..." I love it!