Columbia University Pursues Antisemitism Apace

You would think.....................you would think with all the negative antisemetic media coverage Columbia has been getting (I saw it myself when I attended the Bat Ye'or speaking engagement on Tuesday last- the chair was blatantly antisemetic). Click on this headline for my post on that event. But nooooooooooooooooo, marching to hell they go. And hopefully bankruptcy as well. Whats it gonna take for the jewish alumni to STOP GIVING COLUMBIA THEIR HARD WON MONEY?????????

Columbia Profs for Truthby Ryan SagerNew York PostFebruary 11, 2005
http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/39645.htmhttp://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1632
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has an other headache on his hands, The Post has learned.
A group of professors on campus is releasing a report today that is highly critical of the university's handling of charges of anti-Semitism and classroom intimidation — and especially of the committee that Bollinger set up to investigate.
What's more, students who have observed the committee's proceedings are raising their own troubling questions about the direction the inquiry has taken.
"I don't understand why a committee investigating such a sensitive issue would be recruited among people with such blatant conflicts of interest," says Judith Jacobson, an assistant professor of public health and founder of the Columbia chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the group issuing the report.
As the group's report details, out of five members on Bollinger's committee: two signed an anti-Israel divestment petition, one was the thesis adviser for Joseph Massad (a professor prominently accused of wrongdoing), one has written that Israel is responsible for global anti-Semitism and one is a university administrator who ignored student complaints for months. The man who handpicked the committee, Nick Dirks, is married to a professor who co-teaches a class with Massad.
"If the purpose of the committee is to protect . . . faculty, it seems likely to achieve success," the whistleblowing faculty report concludes. "If its purpose is to conduct a serious investigation, it appears doomed to failure."
That report went out to Columbia's trustees two weeks ago. Having received no response, its authors decided to go public.
If the trustees' interest wasn't piqued before, however, they may want to take another look at how the Bollinger committee is proceeding.
Sophomore Bari Weiss, head of Columbians for Academic Freedom, says committee member Ira Katznelson has made it clear that the panel's report will not be for public consumption. Yesterday, Columbia spokeswoman Katherine Moore said that the internal report will be "full and frank." But only a summary of this report will be made available to the public.
Not confidence inspiring, that.
Weiss, who has accompanied students testifying before the panel, also tells The Post that the committee has shown an inordinate amount of interest in the making of the film "Columbia Unbecoming," which, along with reports in The New York Sun, brought the initial charges of intimidation to light last November.
(Columbia won't comment on the committee's work other than to reaffirm that it considers its composition appropriate.)
In the movie, one Jewish student recounts that a professor of Islamic civilization, George Saliba, told her she had no business questioning him because, "You have no claim to the land of Israel . . . You have green eyes." Another student, an Israeli who had served in the Israel Defense Forces, recounts Massad ranting: "How many Palestinians have you killed?"
The film was created by LionPAC, a pro-Israel student group at Columbia, in cooperation with the David Project, a national group that fights campus anti-Semitism. That's never been a secret, yet it appears the committee may now be looking to portray the film as the work of outside agitators — maybe even, shall we say, a Zionist conspiracy.
All of this makes it clearer than ever that Bollinger either doesn't have a handle on this scandal, or is still looking to cover up the problem rather than confront it.
The issue goes far beyond intimidation of students — and straight to the quality of Columbia's Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, which is infected with hatred of Israel. and wait wait wait, theres MORE!
Bias of Massad Is Being Noted in His Classesby Jacob GershmanNew York SunFebruary 7, 2005
http://www.nysun.com/article/8799http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1601
Israel is: a) a Jewish supremacist state, b) the worst human-rights abuser in the Middle East, c) a major factor preventing the democratization of the Arab region, or d) all of the above.
If you answered "d," you would fit right in at a core-curriculum course at Columbia University taught by an assistant professor of modern Arab politics, Joseph Massad, who is a rising star of the university's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.
Mr. Massad, author of the forthcoming book "The Persistence of the Palestinian Question," is best known as one of the Columbia scholars whose alleged mistreatment of Jewish students is at the center of a campus controversy that has attracted national attention from Jewish and academic leaders.
Though the dispute has focused on allegations of intimidation and harassment of students, the more common criticism brought up by students of Mr. Massad has to do not with the appropriateness of his conduct, but with the quality and content of his teaching.
Students of his say he is relentless in his condemnations of Israel and America, even in a course he taught in the fall called Topics in Asian Civilization, in which Israel, at least according to the syllabus, plays only a minor role.
Mr. Massad is not without his admirers. For some Columbia undergraduates, Mr. Massad's political convictions are his primary appeal.
"Many students take offense at the very quality that makes Massad such a brilliant academic and honest, effective teacher," one anonymous student posted on a Web site that collects reviews of Columbia professors and courses. "He neither claims nor supports purported academic 'objectivity.' He holds an intellectual conviction and offers rational, clear, and cogent arguments."
For other students, like sophomore Bari Weiss, taking one of his courses can be "suffocating."
In the fall semester, she was a student in Topics in Asian Civilization. Mr. Massad taught the second half and was responsible for covering a history of the Middle East from the beginnings of Islam to 20th-century Arab nationalism.
"The course was supposed to be all about the Middle East," Ms. Weiss said. "The amount of time he spent talking about Zionism or the Jewish nation or Jewish culture was inappropriate."
In previous semesters, Mr. Massad taught a seminar course on the Middle East conflict, but "under the duress of coercion and intimidation" he chose not to teach it this academic year, he wrote on his university Web site. One student who took the course in 2002, Deena Shanker, said Mr. Massad told her to leave the class if she persisted in denying that Israel committed atrocities against Palestinians. Mr. Massad, who refuses to speak to The New York Sun, has denied mistreating any students and has accused his critics of trying to censor his political views.
According to three students' course notes from Topics in Asian Civilization, including ones Ms. Weiss took, Mr. Massad in his lectures repeatedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa, dismissed its legitimacy as a Jewish state, and almost never addressed human rights abuses in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The other two students whose notes were obtained by the Sun did not want their names to be used in this article.
"I was shocked knowing what was going on in the Middle East and the egregious human-rights violations that the professor either glossed over them or ignored them completely," Ms. Weiss, 20, said. She is one of the students who have pressed Columbia to investigate the conduct of professors in the Middle East studies department.
"In nearly all of his lectures, professor Massad found a way to denounce Israel and the West," Ms. Weiss, who received an "A" for the course, said.
"We were not presented with any material that argued that Zionism is not racist," she said.
Topics in Asian Civilization is required for students who major in Middle East studies, and it also can be used by all Columbia undergraduates to help fulfill their "major cultures" requirement, which makes up part of the university's renowned core curriculum. One hundred and sixty-five students enrolled in the course, according to Columbia's online course bulletin.