35 Comments

1. legion:

Roger, I believe an intelligent person can get a better education over the internet than he could get at an Ivy League school, these days. The so called “elite” schools have become expensive gulags of indoctrination, with very few redeeming features to recommend them.

Just as those parents who are able to homeschool their children can produce a better educated child than the public school system, so can a young adult create his own education using the tools available, and avoid the brain washing gestapo that is taking over more institutions of formerly higher learning.

Nov 22, 2004 - 2:19 pm 2. chuck:

I followed the thread about this on LGF. There was a Columbia student commenting there who said that things were not as bad as the article implied. It’s a newpaper article after all, so needs to be treated with the scepticism that applies to all reporting.

That said, as an alumni of Columbia I am holding off on making any contributions until I can learn more. I sure have a lot of guestions to ask any student who calls as part of a fund drive. The story about Genova was bad enough, and this is worse.

How could this have come about? When I attended the college it was about 32% Jewish. One would think that there would have been a significant response to these developments long ago. Then again, like many things, it may be newly uncovered. The election of Bush and the war in Iraq seems to have brought out the hidden nut in many folks.

A Poison Ivy. Heh.

Nov 22, 2004 - 2:21 pm 3. Bob:

legion says: “The so called ‘elite’ schools have become expensive gulags of indoctrination, with very few redeeming features to recommend them.”

And other than this horrible story about Columbia, legion bases this on … what, exactly?

My son is a freshman at Harvard, taking two political science classes and a class in Arabic literature in his first semester. I shuddered inside when he told me he was taking these courses (particularly Arabic lit), but as the semester has gone forward I’ve been more than a little surprised at how little indoctrination there has been — in a word, none. If there is a “brainwashing Gestapo” at Harvard, I’ve yet to hear about it. I can’t, of course, say anything about other Ivy League schools or “elite” institutions.

And by the way: Had I homeschooled my son I could never have given him as good an education as he got in what legion calls (using the broadest possible strokes, as appears to be his wont) the “public school system” — specifically, in magnet schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Indeed, the high school my son attended (the Highly Gifted Magnet at North Hollywood High School) provides an education on a par with the very finest, and far better than the run-of-the-mill, private high schools in the United States. And that includes Andover, Exeter, and Harvard-Westlake.

Nov 22, 2004 - 2:33 pm 4. jedrury:

This is repulsive stuff about Columbia. It can not be condone or allowed to flourish.

But the question is: where does the university draw the line on this freedom of expression, freedonm of thought?

Since the 60s, universities have routinely

been the hotbed for political controversy with firebrand professors like Angela Davis and Cormel West.

Granted their teachings are racial injustice but is there a substantial and meaningful difference to the teaching of religious injustice [using

the word "teachings"advisedly, of course; reading West is as bizarre an experience as reading and understanding Umberto Eco in Italian].

There can be no line to be drawn. We outside the university look in; allow the academic community to discipline their own. And, of course,

we watch as the alumni withholds, the local and campus papers denounce and the Columbia students denounce, complain and argue and most importantly not enroll and attend the classes of these hatemongers.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:00 pm 5. legion:

The dropout rate in LA public schools is horrendous. You might find 30% of high school students in LA who could locate Canada on a world map, or calculate simple interest on a loan.

Ho hum.

As for Harvard lacking indoctrination, you might consider enrolling yourself, Bob. That’s the only way you could really make that claim, since kids these days have been swimming in it so long they probably wouldn’t recognize until it bit them in the ass.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:07 pm 6. chuck:

jedrury:

where does the university draw the line on this freedom of expression, freedonm of thought?

Good question. I think the line needs to be drawn at the point where professors abuse the students, suppress discussion, or let their views affect grades. Many people from the Near East hold the same views as these professors and it is probably a good thing that the students are exposed to such views. It is not a good thing if they cannot argue.

bob:

I agree that the Ivies do offer an excellent, if expensive, education. My undergrad education at Columbia would have sufficed for an advanced degree from many colleges. On the other hand, I have heard that the quality of the graduate school is more important than the undergraduate school. Makes sense, if an important part of graduate work is apprenticeship to a successful scholar.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:16 pm 7. chuck:

Oh, and it goes without saying that the facts presented in class should be “true” facts. If it is a history class, then it is not too much to ask that historical events should have actually happened.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:28 pm 8. dr. sanity:

The current president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, was president of the Univeristy of Michigan from 96- 2002. He is a vocal and aggressive advocate of diversity, multiculturalism and affirmative action. It is not surprising that such things happen on his watch. UM has the same reputation; frequently has pro-Palestinian marches, and is a national clearing center for any hare-brained leftist idea.

It will be interesting to see what Bollinger will do with this situation. My guess is not much.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:33 pm 9. Bob:

I do believe we have a new King Of The Sweeping Generalization! The crown (at least for today) goes to legion, who says:

“You might find 30% of high school students in LA who could locate Canada on a world map, or calculate simple interest on a loan.”

You might. You might not. Any evidence for this, legion? Or is it something you have made up for purposes of argument?

“[K]ids these days have been swimming in [indoctrination] so long they probably wouldn’t recognize until it bit them in the ass.”

Which kids these days? All of them? Hmmm … I know, and could name, lots of kids who would recognize indoctrination long before it bit them in the ass. This appears to be another statement legion has made for the effect of seeing how it looks in print, I guess.

But hey — it doesn’t matter, because he is The King Of The Sweeping Generalization!

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:40 pm 10. chuck:

dr. sanity:

It is not surprising that such things happen on his watch.

It takes more than two years to become a full professor. My guess is that this started back with Edward Said. Then too, if a department has professors from the Near East, some are going to hold these views. What is apparent to me is that these folks reached their position without having to undergo criticism, or take into account the western tradition. In a word, they are not well rounded. That is disturbing, and shows a failure of our educational institutions in the broadest sense. Ideology should not be confused with scholarship.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:43 pm 11. bkochba:

You can be crazy, or you can be crazily expensive, but you can’t be both and continue to succeed.

I attended Columbia for a semester, more years ago than I care to think (this was the 80s). There was more than a bit of genteel antisemitism, all very refined, but there. (I didn’t experience that anywhere else.) This might be because they had such a strong New York - Jewish presence on campus.

Nov 22, 2004 - 3:53 pm 12. legion:

Joannejacobs.com is an excellent blog look at contemporary government school “education.”

On college campuses these days, remedial education is a growth industry, in no small part due to the failure of government schools to prepare their students responsibly.

As for the gulag-like suppression of free speech on university campuses, one only has to visit the several blogs and websites devoted to pressuring universities to honor traditional academic standards of free intellectual inquiry. It is an uphill battle these days.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:05 pm 13. Kevin P:

Roger:

Just as the ultimate victory of Communism was considered a given fact at many of the Universities during the 60’s and 70’s the truth of the zionism equals racism is the new conventional wisdom in the academic world and not just at the Ivy league schools. I live near Cal State Fullerton in Orange County and if you go to the local student coffee houses you will hear constant arguments justifying the suicide bombings in the middle east and the cliche that Israel and the US are the root of all evil in the world. Even the recent beheadings are justified because of the life that the Jews and Americans have imposed on the Arabs of the middle east. Zinn and Chomsky are the old and new testaments of the first and second year students and they repeat their dogmatic chants verbatim. You will hear and see the results of the indoctrination of college set and the hate that spews out of their mouths is incredible to witness.These kids are learning a warped vision of the country that they live in and I would suggest any parent to examine the texts their kids are reading, even in their local high schools. If your child is using the Howard Zinn text they are being fed some of the most hatefull bile about the country that they live in. When they go to college and hear it repeated it becomes cemented in their psyche.When I go to MEMRI and hear the hate speech of the middle eastern press and governments I am appalled. When I hear it repeated by our “best and brightest” I get frightened.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:05 pm 14. thedragonflies:

I think it is about time for an anti-establishment student movement in the Universities, ala what happened in the ë60s when the boomers hit the schools. The establishment, of course, being the leftist faculty. This would be from the ìMillennialî generation, those born after 1982. The first wave has hit, and I think they might have been less likely to accept the leftist dogma that their predecessors did a decade ago.

I wonder if todayís profs are getting worried that the new crop of kids coming in are less pliable than they used to be. I have no info about it, but I am hopeful that todayís students are more and more critical of the anti-American rants they are exposed to.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:08 pm 15. chuck:

Genteel? Columbia? Surely you jest.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:15 pm 16. Silicon valley Jim:

I believe an intelligent person can get a better education over the internet than he could get at an Ivy League school, these days. The so called “elite” schools have become expensive gulags of indoctrination, with very few redeeming features to recommend them.

I respectfully disagree. I didn’t try to get an education over the internet in my college days, in large part because I finished graduate school in 1975, but I can testify from personal experience as to one advantage of an elite, although not an Ivy League, school. I did my undergraduate work at far-from-prestigious DePaul and my graduate work at Stanford. My classmates were far more intelligent and better educated at Stanford. I suspect that some of that is simply the graduate versus undergarduate difference, but I doubt that all, or even most of it, is. As a result, I learned a great deal from my classmates there, which was not the case at DePaul. In addition, professors were able to cover considerably more material in an hour of class time, because the students were able to comprehend the material much faster. I’m far from happy with the fact that left-wing politics has infested teaching and scholarship at Stanford (not that DePaul has been immune from that, either), but I expect that the advantages stemming from a brighter, better-educated student body persist.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:28 pm 17. thibaud:

Columbia’s provost, Prof. Alan Brinkley, doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s about speech, when the accounts of the students make it clear that this is about professors abusing the authority of the classroom to bully students.

I went to Columbia and U- Michigan and never saw that happen, even in classes run by hardcore marxists. But then, I never took courses from any arab scholars. Something is very, very wrong with Columbia’s Near Eastern Studies faculty. The question is, how far beyond Columbia does the rot extend?

If the next generation of US foreign policy experts and experts on the middle east is trained by these thugs, then the nation’s in serious trouble. Congress needs to look into this problem and figure out how to reform the Near Eastern Studies professoriat.

Nov 22, 2004 - 4:30 pm 18. Joe Schmoe:

I just don’t believe this.

There is plenty of PC leftism on campus, sure. But Columbia is what, 33 - 50% Jewish? Jews are undoubtedly represented on the faculty in similar numbers. That’s not exactly a breeding ground for anti-semitism.

When I was in law school at NYU, I was one of five WASPs in a class of maybe 400. That’s not an exxageration, BTW. My girlfriend was an undergrad at Columbia and the numbers there were similar. Basically, everyone who was white was Jewish. Heck, even the guy I knew from Iceland was Jewish. (His name was Thor Denmark).

Nonethless, the student body was always complaining of anti-semitism. But it was crazy. How can there be anti-semitism in New York City? Everyone there is Jewish, for goodness’ sake. But to hear my classmates talk about it, New York was still domainted by the Rockefeller set.

These beliefs were most often expressed during hiring season. During the fall semester of our second and third years of school, all of the Wall Street law firms came to campus to interview students for jobs. There were always rumors that they discrimianted against Jews. At one time, they did indeed discriminate. But that ended in the 50’s. Today, if look at the roster of partners at any white shoe firm, you’ll find that two-thirds of them are Jewish. So are two-thirds of the rainmakers who really run things at the firm. I’ve worked with all of the top firms and have encountered one that discrmiinates. But you wouldn’t know that to hear my classmates talk about it. They were all graduates of Ivy League colleges with wealthy parents who nonetheless talked as if they still trying to claw their way out of a Lower East Side ghetto.

And even within the Jewish community, there were complaints of discrimination. I was friends with a lot of really orthodox people. They were always worried that less religious people would discriminate against them because they can’t work Saturdays, etc. One friend was offered a clerkship with a federal judge in Missouri but refused it because she was sure that someone would burn a cross outside her window. When I told her that no one there would even know, much less care, that she was Jewish, she simply stared at me in disbelief.

This was particularly annoying on a personal level because I, the white protestant son of a cab driver from Chicago who paid his own way through a midwestern state university, was universally assumed to be part of the WASP power structure. Well, let’s just say that (a) I have never actually encountered this white power structure, and I have been a lawyer for almost ten years — and (b) let’s just say that yours truly, who held down three jobs at a time to pay his way through college, don’t exactly have an a lot in common with the John Kerrys and Nelson Rockefellers, the few remaining WASPS who still are wealthy and influential. I was also coming from a background that was much, much less priviliged than my fellow students, which made it even harder to put up with their complaints.

So while there was plenty of talk about anti-Semitism, I never actually saw any. All of the complaints of discrimination were totally fictional.

I have no doubt that a similar situation prevails in the non-professional graduate schools. Actually, I would think that the likelihood is even lesser there becuase of the PC midset that is so widespread there. The law school was quite liberal, but aside from the practice of using “she” instead of “he” as the generic gender-neutral pronoun, little time was spent on PC subjects; subjects like patent law and income tax don’t really lend themselves to feminist deconstruction. Also, lawyers are by necessity thick skinned. But in the graduate schools? Come on. No one would dare utter an anti-Semetic statement in an environment like that.

Do you really think that some graduate student, whose every step is being watched by the penny-ante PC politicians/thought police of academia in her department, would ever dare utter an anti-Semetic remark? In an environment that is 50% Jewish or more? We all know how intense the competition is in grad school. No one would taka chance like that, not when their whole career could be destroyed.

Sure, maybe a few tenured Muslim professors like Edward Said are willing to say stuff like that, but I simply cannot believe that the practice is as widespread as these articles seem to suggest.

Frankly, I think this is just an example of anti-Semetic paranoia. This has got to be blown all out of proportion. I just don’t believe it.

Nov 22, 2004 - 5:00 pm 19. Joe Schmoe:

oops typo…meant to say “I’ve worked with all of the top firms and have NOT encountered one that discriminates.”

Columbia is becoming the “republic of fear”?!? What a joke.

Nov 22, 2004 - 5:06 pm 20. richard mcenroe:

Bob — If you want a further datum, check out the squalid antisemitism at Berkeley that has been documented here and many other places.

Nov 22, 2004 - 5:42 pm 21. jedrury:

Chuck:

You are right - there can not be student bullying. There surely is a degree of professorial subjectivity in grading, if you argue. These haughty professors may not be willing to welcome the persistent contrarian in his class.

My perception is skewered by the law school experience where every teacher wanted you to stand up and argue your point and point counter point your way to an argumentative standoff.

I would hope that the higher educational processes in today’s university provides a mechanism for righting these wrongs. But I

leave that fight to the Lee Bollingers of Columbia who were so sanctimous in their defense of affirmative action that may be some of that self righteous fervor will wear off in defense of students and their protests against these tenured hate mongers.

This last comment is not too sarcastic for this site, is it ?

Nov 22, 2004 - 5:49 pm 22. Vexorg:

Another good place to look would be FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. They are a group that primarily works to oppose abridgement of freedom of speech on campuses (mostly in the form of speech codes)and although apparently nonpartisan, a majority of the cases they take involve attempts to suppress conservative viewpoints on campus.

http://www.thefire.org/

Nov 22, 2004 - 6:02 pm 23. chuck:

jedrury:

I stuck pretty much to the sciences just so as to avoid subjects where the teacher was the final authority. This was actually a concious decision I made in high school. It was just too much trouble to hold contrarian opinions in subjects like english. From what you say about argueing, it would probably be a good thing if everyone took some law courses. A thick skin is good to have.

Joe Schmoe:

Interesting comments. You make some good points that I will keep in mind. What we need here is reports from current students at Columbia.

Nov 22, 2004 - 6:02 pm 24. truepeers:

Joe Schmoe

No doubt many Jews are quick to imagine anti-semitism, in part because most Jews don’t understand why this prejudice is such a deeply rooted and recurring historical phenomenon. As a remedy, I would point to the essays of Prof. Eric Gans of UCLA; he has quite simply the best analysis of anti-semitism today. He is also one of the most important American intellectuals, though his ideas are widely ignored. I excerpt the following passage from a recent Gans column; it gives insight into the kind of anti-semitism that one is very likely to experience in NYC academe: http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw302.htm

“Antisemitism is increasingly present not only in the Middle East or in Europe but right here at home. I was recently rather painfully reminded of this when I mentioned to a colleague that I was delivering a talk on antisemitism at this conference, which he interpreted as a conference on antisemitism. This gentleman is a distinguished scholar, author of a few dozen books, retired from a major university in New York City. Here is the relevant portion of his reply:

“In the conference on anti-Semitism, I presume you’re against it. I am tooóbut does anyone ever speak out FOR anti-Semitism? Do they ever include any Palestinians (or Neo-Nazi’s?). I know, I know, that’s not amusing (thoughóand here we might well part company), but I do see what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, admittedly on a smaller, and somewhatóbut ONLY somewhatómore haphazard scale, as a mini-holocaust, and for my mind Sharon is a terrorist almost comparable to Bin Laden. But I expect we, you and I, ought not to go there.

“No, I guess we ought indeed not to go there; but what is fascinating in this little paragraph is how much he wants to go there. Knowing he is writing to a Jew, he feels no compunction about suggesting that the partisans of antisemitism deserve something like ìequal time.î And no nonsense here about distinguishing between antisemitism and anti-Zionism; my message said nothing about Israel or the Palestinians. It is shocking and dismaying that an educated New Yorker can so glibly compare Sharon and Bin Laden, Israelís actions and those of the Nazis, and then, in an unconsciously insulting gesture, suggest that we ìought not to go thereî because we might quarrel, as though his remarks were not already a statement of his half of the quarrel.

“Shocking, dismaying, yet all too familiar; when we speak of ìIslamicî as opposed to ìChristianî antisemitism, this little incident should remind us that, with the exception of the ìneo-Nazisî my friend thinks deserve a hearing, Christian antisemitism today is Islamic. It partakes of the same global nihilism, without the global-religious context that makes bin Ladenís outlook (at least) coherent. A New Yorker who lived through 9/11 has more sympathy for those who cheered at the death of 3000 of his fellow citizens than for Israel, and by extension, for the Jewish people. Why? Although he is blithely indifferent to the proliferation of antisemitic propaganda (ìbut does anyone ever speak out FOR antisemitism?î), surely not because he believes Jews use Christian blood to make matzoth, or because he thinks of them as vulgar, dishonest, evil-smelling, or what have you. No, his antisemitism resembles that of the plurality of Europeans who consider Israel ìthe country that is the greatest danger to world peace.î Such people do not believe in the Protocols, but they respect the right of Muslims to believe in them. Just as Mahathir sees the Jewish state, rather than the billion-odd members of industrialized societies, as the linchpin of the Western-global economy–a few millions who cannot long hold off 1.3 billion Muslims–so does my friend see the Jewish state, rather than those 1.3 billion Muslims, as the chief obstacle to global integration. Muslims, whatever they do, are not members of a nation defined by its exclusive firstness; whatever their difficulties, they are potential subjects of a global world. We too are citizens of nations, but in Israel we repudiate whatever in the national dream might pose an obstacle to globalization. In the Palestinian people we see ourselves; their suicide bombers, even Bin Ladenís planes, the expression of our rage at the Jews as the originary source of national exclusiveness. We would all live in peace as equals in a global world if we could only, by murder or transcendence, get past this singularity.

“The fatal paradox of monotheism is parallel to that of globalization; if God is one and societies are plural, then the particular enunciation of the monotheist doctrine is inconsistent with its universal substance. The Jews have long paid the price for this paradox. The Jewish people has been the worldís exemplary model of a group irrationally privileged by history: unlike the privilege of men over women, Westerners over ìOrientals,î the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, industrialized countries over the developing world, that of the Jews is conveniently vulnerable to attack, yet never effectively reversible.

“The perfect world will come when the Jews are but one people among many, as they have largely been in the United States since WWII. But the world will never be perfect; antisemitism will always be with us. Each generation will have to win its own way to understanding the Jewsí historical priority as being in the service of universal humanityís ontological equality.”

Nov 22, 2004 - 7:04 pm 25. Terrye:

I went to a midwestern college, IU and did not go to grad school. It was a long time ago and Viet Nam and Watergate are all I really remember about it.

I know I would not want to get a second mortgage so that my kid could learn to be anti semitic and snooty.

As for homeschooling, a friend of mine is homeschooling her daughter, but then the mother has a degree herself and so far the little girl is doing very well. I do think she will send her to public school eventually however.

I don’t know about getting an education on the internet but I have seen some really stupid people with degrees.

No offence.

Nov 22, 2004 - 7:54 pm 26. Mad Oilman:

Umm, the Ivy League is a football conference. Yeah, I know its more universially recognized definition, but that’s all it is. Given events as indicated above, it seems it wil soon revert to its historical definition.

Nov 22, 2004 - 8:11 pm 27. Richard Nieporent:

I too went to Columbia (Class of 64) when the percentage of Jewish students was very high and there was no overt anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, the climate has changed to the point where there is open hostility towards Jewish students. Columbia’s Near Eastern Studies department was taken over by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli and anti-American faculty. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, the anthropology department is replete with anti-American, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian faculty.

Joe Schmoe, it may be hard for you to believe that Columbia could be this bad, but it is. I was at a lecture given by Alan Dershowitz two weeks ago where he singled out Columbia as one of the worst universities in the country with respect to open hostility toward its Jewish students. He stated that there is not one Columbia professor who will stand up and defend the Jewish students on campus.

Nov 22, 2004 - 8:35 pm 28. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

The intellectual framework for this madness was laid when University faculties we4nt hard left (justifying discrimination against non-leftists) and then PC and then multiculturalism. The latter, allowed to simmer for a while, creates intolerance and discrimination in almost any setting, with those allowed to be attacked including Jews, Christians and white people in general. This process has been building over 30 years.

My daughter went to Johns Hopkins, which doesn’t inflict this nonsensee on undergraduates. It is joining the Ivy League, which means they have to substantially relax their grading standards. But it doesn’t cause the importation of PC’ness.

Regarding home schooling… an OBGYN friend of mine was on the resident selection committee for a local hospital. She discovered that every doctor who had survived their selection process had been home schooled.

My mother, a mathematician, engineer and then public school teacher, insisted that none of her grandchildren go to public schools. A greater percentage of public school teachers than the rest of the parents in their area send their kids to private schools. However, it is clear that magnet programs can be good.

Nov 22, 2004 - 9:58 pm 29. Morgan:

I’m not sure whether we’re looking at institutional antisemitism here. It looks to me like tolerance of antisemitism instead. This is consistent with the current thread of liberal thought that justifies any action of the (perceived) victim.

A distinction without a difference, maybe. I may have a tendency to see it this way because of my own experiences - to me it looks like the same strain that was current when I was an undergraduate - Blacks can’t be racist, etc. Failure to condemn it feels like “don’t blame the victim”, which really means “don’t blame members of the designated victim group”. Muslims can’t be blamed for spewing the vile bile, because they have “designated victim” status.

Those who hold these views feel quite comfortable tarring whole groups with the victim and oppressor labels, and the Palestinians are one group of high-status designated victims. The US and Israel are high-status perpetual oppressors, of course - the US inescapably so for a long time to come, the Israelis so long as they are more powerful than the neighbors who hate them, try to kill them, and end up dead. Perhaps an inescapable position as well, short of national suicide.

What is remarkable to me is the fact that this obviously flawed victim/oppressor dichotomy has such currency among those who really ought to be able to think their way through to a more realistic position. Do these people think Bush sees the world in black and white?

I can see that particular people might be blinded in particular cases due to emotional involvement, identification with one group or another, whatever. I may be somewhat blind to really unethical behavior on the part of the US, for example. But how can an entire group of people wind up with such a blatantly cockeyed view across a whole range of victim groups of which they are not part?

It’s very strange. My only thought is that they are defining the victims by reference to a small group of oppressors - any group in conflict with the oppressors is automatically the victim.

I’m thinking out loud (in plain sight?), now. I’ll leave it at that.

Nov 22, 2004 - 10:34 pm 30. Joe Schmoe:

I still don’t believe it. Not for one second.

Are there leftist academics, most associated with Middle Eastern Studies, who make anti-semetic statements? Sure, no doubt. Maybe even a few members of the English department who think that “both sides are equally to blame” for the current situation in the Middle East? You bet.

But Columbia University — Columbia University — a “republic of fear?!?” Give me a break.

What are some of the other hotbeds of anti-Semitism? Yeshiva? Brandeis? Bar-Ilan?

I know paranoia when I see it. And this is paranoia.

And I don’t believe that things have changed, either. Not in eight years. NYU has only recently become a top five law school. For many years, it was a crappy local school. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, a bunch of rich alums gave it like $1 billion which the law school used to improve itself in the rankings.

The dean used to say that the alums had become so wealthy and successful because “back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, Columbia wouldn’t admit Jews,” so they all went to NYU. I believed him until one day I had to get an old Columbia Law Review article from the 1930’s. I happened to see the first page, which contained the names of the editors. I started looking for the name of a family friend who had attended the school at about that time. I was surprised to discover that the names of the law review editors were like 2/3 Jewish. And there was hardly a Creighton Witherspoon III to be found. The dean’s tale of “discrimination” in the old days was just BS. Was there discrimination in Ivy League schools in the 30’s? Yes. But it was blown all out of proportion.

I am confident that the “anti-Semitism” at Columbia today is being similarly exaggerated. A few nutball Arab professors take sides against Israel, and maybe there is an occasional demonstration, but that is it.

As for Dershowitz, he is one of those people whose entire universe centers around Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. He is aware that there is a wider world out there but wants absolutely nothing to do with it. He will obsess over anti-Semitism on Ivy League campuses until the cows come home.

There is anti-Semitism in the Middle East. There is anti-Semitism in Europe. There is still some anti-Semitism among ordinary Americans, though great progress has been made. In the great scheme of things, there is ZERO anti-Semitism at Columbia University and anyone who claims that there is engaging in hysterics and wasting everyone’s time.

Nov 22, 2004 - 10:59 pm 31. chuck:

Morgan,

In a larger sense, I wonder when it became necessary for faculty to be political crusaders. Is there no place for pure scholarship? What is the university environment for, if not to provide a refuge where unworldly and unprofitable scholarship can be pursued. Why isn’t the ivory tower just that?

Of course, I know when this happened. It was the 60’s, the era of relevance. I thought it was a bad idea then, and still think so now.

Nov 22, 2004 - 11:01 pm 32. WichitaBoy:

chuck,

You are absolutely right, it occurred in the Sixties. There was, in essence, a great religious transformation of Western society which occurred in the Sixties, comparable in its way to the Great Awakening itself. The religious transformation was aided and abetted by the newfound abundance of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and all the other good stuff. There’s a reason that the Catholic church has been using drugs and music for ages (and some would say there’s a pretty heavy sexual component there too).

The new religion born in the Sixties places Social Justice as mediated by the State in the exalted throne of God. The highest goal attainable by an individual–the new purpose of life itself–is to further the “cause” of social justice. This is done through politics. “Social justice”, like “God”, is an undefined term. You must have faith you see. Just do what the other believers are doing.

The professors who came of age during the Sixties, the young converts to the new faith, entered the academy for political, not academic, purposes. Political action for social justice is their religion. They must be politically involved. This is as necessary to them as that Muslims of a certain ilk must convert non-believers at the point of a bomb.

Krugman is an outstanding example of the type. A brilliant economist, he has jettisoned his interests in that direction, because Truth is not his God, nor is Science, but rather Social Justice.

A recent study showed that whatever music was prevalent in our youth is the music that we prefer throughout our lives. No doubt the same thing is true of our religious proclivities.

It seems to me that the new religion, in the grand scheme of things, is a pretty weak religion, one destined to pass rather quickly from the scene. When all is said and done, fighting for ever greater federal largesse in the form of free pills for old people isn’t really a very life-sustaining faith, particularly in times of serious crisis. That is why I believe more and more of these worshippers of Social Justice will turn elsewhere, possibly to Islam, for some real religious sustenance.

Nov 23, 2004 - 12:34 am 33. truepeers:

Joe Schmoe: ìI am confident that the “anti-Semitism” at Columbia today is being similarly exaggerated. A few nutball Arab professors take sides against Israel, and maybe there is an occasional demonstration, but that is it.î

Some schools in the 30s did have quotas for Jewish admissions. I donít know about Columbia, but I imagine that if you were Jewish and able to get a spot, you would be inclined to go all out intellectually ñ strive to be a Law Review editor, etc. ñ because you were not likely going to land a job by removing employersí doubts that you could master the role of the old boy/live wire who would not cause the top firms anxieties over whether you would fit in and play the desired role. There was a lot of Judeophobia among elites in the 30s on both sides of the Atlantic ñ thatís a well-established fact among historians ñ and I imagine Jewish lawyers working within finance industry would be both undesired by certain clients and also able to serve in certain Jewish commercial niches. Memories would naturally be tinged and corroded by certain resentments of what was and was not allowed.

I agree with you that some Jews are inclined to paranoia, but frankly you cannot deny that this may not be completely irrational at times, least of all in our present world. I mean, I sometimes wonder how people continue to work, raise families, etc., in NYC, Washington, London, Tel Aviv, given all the experts who suggest it is not unlikely that one day there will be a terrorist bomb. We cannot back down or live in fear. Still, is it fair to ask, who is more deluded?

But what I really want to say in reply is that it is more than a few nutball profs who take sides against Israel. Anti-Israel sentiment (all out of proportion to the sins of that state in comparison with those of many others) is not uncommon in many universities. It serves a role for the self-righteous, would-be romantic intellectual heroes fighting powerful bad guys. I have no idea how to measure it, but it is not difficult to find if you are looking for it. Joe, you doubt the Columbia story because, I think, you fail to appreciate the fundamental irrationality of a lot about human culture. The idea of antisemitism in a heavily Jewish university is just irrational to you. Indeed it is, but, for example, you can often find Judaeophobia among Jews, not least among the left in Israeli universities today. Our rationality, to the extent we have any, has only been won through the cultural historical evolution of a humanity that first emerged as irrationally religious and sacrificial in its behaviours. And still, there remains no rationality that is not based, if you dig deep enough, on irrational ìdecisionsî and faith.

What needs to be understood is why political correctness, when taken to certain extremes, is much more likely to become antisemitism (Zionism), compared to other forms of ethnic, or even religious prejudice. Or, in other words, why is antisemitism different from, say, anti-black racism, or anti-Italianism, anti-Canadianism, etc? I think I could show you, if I had the time and your willingness to take seriously the irrational (or sacrificial), that there is a tendency inherent in todayís leftism that renews, in secular dress, the perennial western tendency to pit the Christian admonition to be born anew and imitate Christ, with the Jewish refusal to give up both the principle that G.d is unfigurable and the memory that monotheism was first discovered through a compact with the Jews. (Gansí point is that the secular left ìChristiansî have become ìIslamicî in order to renew this tension in the game of what revelation should be given paramount respect in our understanding of human truths.)

The paradox is that postmodern thought, rooted in the reaction to the victimization of the Holocaust, is, in the thought of central figures like Derrida, rather Jewish in its refusal to privilege any representation that would make a claim on the center of our shared attention. Instead, deconstuct, deconstruct, etc. But since some of us refuse to go along with the postmodern solution of acknowledging a universal humanity only through the nihilist strategy of a relativism in which all distinguishing values are considered equal and equally different, and because we remain tied to the idea that we must respect the revelatory lessons of history in which certain discoveries have happened to some and not others, e.g. to Jews, first: e.g. the discovery of monotheism, and the postmodern revelation that, under certain circumstances, there can no longer be any of the usual doubts about who is the victim and who the victimizer, the Jews and the Nazis.

But there is a price to pay for being both the paradigm monotheists and victims; in a culture obsessed with victimary thinking, you become the object of a new kind of resentment (why are the Jews never listed in the pc litany of victims, even as the rhetoric remains obsessed with the Holocaust and the Nazis?). It is all irrational, but then resentment, something fundamentally human, is also fundamentally deluded. If you havenít noticed that the postmodern academy is, in the humanities and much of the social sciences, based on privileging resentments and their attendant delusions, it is because you have been much smarter than some of us and have made your career in the non-utopian, grounded, and rational discipline of the law.

Nov 23, 2004 - 1:22 am 34. thibaud:

All due respect, Joe, you’re missing the point. It’s not so much that jewish students at Columbia feel besieged or harassed, it’s that one of the most crucial academic disciplines today is being (has been?) hijacked by a group of rabidly anti-US and anti-Israel arab fanatics.

The effect is to choke off the supply of well-educated, clear-eyed middle east experts at a time when our foreign policy hierarchy desperately needs many new recruits. Imagine if, during the Cold War, instead of brilliant and patriotic Russian/Soviet/FP experts like Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam (Harvard), Wolfgang Leonhard, John Lewis Gaddis (Yale), Seweryn Bialer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Legvold (Columbia), our students had been stuck with Chomskyite professors.

The point here is what’s going on inside the classrooms. This is a national scandal with national security consequences. The Near Eastern Studies discipline needs to be reformed.

Nov 23, 2004 - 8:59 am 35. Barry Meislin:

For the past several years, anti-Semitism has become politically correct while anti-Zionism is now virtue.

This has been one of the greatest accomplishments of the current Palestinian war (aka “intifada”) against Israel, and its success, a testimony to Yassir Arafat’s genius, is one reason why the “intifada” will continue.

Palestine from the River to the Sea.

It is only a matter of time before Israel’s legitimacy, severely damaged world-wide, by the global arbiters of morality (and legion adulators of Arafat), will collapse entirely. It is only a matter of time before those myriads who currently justify suicide bombing and terror against Israelis will conclude that Israel no longer has a right to exist.

That is, if they haven’t concluded as much already.

The colleges and universities are leading the way. And the leading colleges and leading universities are in the vanguard.

So get used to it.

Or don’t. It’s up to you.

Nov 23, 2004 - 1:34 pm

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