Results tagged “noose”

Did Morningside Heights relocate below the Mason-Dixon line or something? Yet another noose has surfaced at Columbia Teachers College, where a black teacher previously found one hanging on her classroom door in 2007. This time the perpetrator went sent the hate two-dimensionally, in the form of a noose drawing. It was sent to the same professor, Madonna Constantine, but she isn't even at Columbia anymore, having been fired last year amid unrelated allegations of plagiarism. But the hate doesn't stop there! Three other 8x12-inch envelopes containing drawings of swastikas were sent to Jewish professors, so they wouldn't feel left out. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has assigned the investigation to the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force, and Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman sent an e-mail to students and faculty urging everyone to cooperate in the probe. Columbia's student-run blog has that e-mail, and notes that the 2007 noose culprit is still at large.

Madonna Constantine, the Columbia Teachers College professor whose office door had a noose hanging on it, was suspended indefinitely for committing plagiarism. The NY Times characterizes the move as a firing, noting a letter from Teachers College says, "We are terminating Madonna Constantine’s employment with Teachers College for cause, subject to a hearing before a faculty committee. In the interim Professor Constantine is suspended, effective immediately.”

The Columbia University community is currently divided over the controversy involving a professor's possible plagiarism, which has escalated to racial politics.

Today is a citywide "Day Out Against Hate." City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Reverend Al Sharpton have spearheaded the event, which was prompted by a number of disturbing hate crime incidents, from swastikas in Brooklyn Heights to a noose found at the Columbia University campus. The Politicker was at one of the events this morning, where Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz "suggested, rather strongly, that city public school students be required to make...