Not surprisingly, the faculty of Columbia University is just as politically polarized as the rest of us. What's surprising is that they continue to call so much attention to themselves. I would have thought someone high up in that particular ivory tower would be doing heavy-duty damage control by now...
Here's the latest. Something called the Faculty Action Committee submitted a "Statement of Concern" that was published in the New York Sun on Nov. 12, complaining that University President Bollinger "has failed to make a vigorous defense of the core principles on which the university if founded, especially academic freedom."
The way I read it, these faculty resent - and are protesting - any internal dissent from their opinions. According to their statement, "academic freedom" demands
- "autonomy of the University in the face of outside threats and pressures." [NB: Princeton University's online WordNet defines autonomy as liberty, that is, "immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority." Thus, they wish the University to be answerable to no authority... other than that which they confer on themselves.]
- "a determining role for faculty in the governance of the University and especially in the shaping of its research and teaching programs." [They want more power, in a situation where they would answer to no one.]
- "the insulation of tenure and promotion decisions from outside interests." [This seems clear enough; they're demanding to be quite literally "insulated" -- from "outside interests" (such as alumni and donors) so they can do as they please, decide what they want, speak as they wish, and - you've got it - answer to no one.]
- And finally, "the creation of an environment that enables the fullest and freest exchange of ideas." [Ditto, a la Ward Churchill, but without any consequences.]
They complain that as faculty they are not sufficiently protected from public opinion and are not consulted on "key issues" such as the size of the student body and the hosting of "controversial speakers."
More specifically, they complain that Bollinger was rude to their genocidal guest and has not sufficiently endorsed their antiwar opinions and Bushatred:
The president's address on the occasion of President Ahmadinejad's visit has sullied the reputation of the University with its strident tone, and has abetted a climate in which incendiary speech prevails over open debate. The president's introductory remarks were not only uncivil and bad pedagogy, they allied the University with the Bush administration's war in Iraq, a position anathema to many in the University community.The real kicker is that because They Know Better, Bollinger should keep his mouth shut:
... the president has publicly taken partisan political positions concerning the politics of the Middle East in particular, without apparent expertise in this area or consultation with faculty who teach and undertake research in this area. His conflation of his own political position with that of the University is unacceptable.
Color me shocked that many of the signatories are Arab Muslims, Nadia Abu El-Haj being the first among them (I know, I know, it's alphabetical). You have to hand it to her - she's got chutzpah.
Signed:Nadia Abu El-Haj, Lila Abu-Lughod, Qais Al-Awqati, Paul Anderer, Mark Anderson, Gil Anidjar, Zainab Bahrani, Akeel Bilgrami, Richard Billows, Elizabeth Blackmar, Partha Chatterjee, Lewis Cole, Jonathan Cole, Elaine Combs-Schilling, Susan Crane, Jonathan Crary, Julie Crawford, Hamid Dabashi, Patricia Dailey, Tom DiPrete, Brent Edwards, Eric Foner, Aaron Fox, Katherine Franke, Victoria de Grazia, Page Fortuna, Steven Gregory, William Harris, Andreas Huyssen, Rashid Khalidi, Alice Kessler-Harris, Marilyn Ivy, Brian Larkin, Lydia Liu, Sylvère Lotringer, Mahmood Mamdani, Peter Marcuse, Reinhold Martin, Mark Mazower, Mary McLeod, Brinkley Messick, Rosalind Morris, Keith Moxey, Frances Negron-Muntaner, Mae Ngai, Bob O'Meally, Neni Panourgia, John Pemberton, Richard Peña, Julie Peters, Pablo Piccato, Sheldon Pollock, Elizabeth Povinelli, Wayne Proudfoot, Bruce Robbins, David Rosner, George Saliba, James Schamus, David Scott, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mark Strand, Paul Strohm, Michael Taussig, Kendall Thomas, Nadia Urbinati, Marc van de Mieroop, Karen van Dyck, Dorothea von Mücke, Gauri Viswanathan, Gwendolyn Wright
In a worldview where, based on self-proclaimed worthiness, an academic charlatan nobody is granted much greater authority - and therefore greater freedoms - than her boss, certainly there is no room for opinion from the masses in general, much less that of an ostensibly ignorant and unworthy citizen blogger. So let me be so bold as to give you just a little Hobbes before we move on.
In the state of nature, every man has a right to every thing, even to one another’s body but the second law is that, in order to secure the advantages of peace, that a man be willing, when others are so too to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.--Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
The Sun published this editorial the same day:
Bollinger's Backbone
....When the professors say "autonomy," they mean a total lack of responsibility or accountability to trustees, students, parents, alumni, or America. When they say "outside threats and pressures," they mean Jewish students and alumni, but not the Arab potentate that funds the professorship of one of the petitioners, Rashid Khalidi.A similar putsch by leftist and anti-Israel professors ousted Lawrence Summers last year from the presidency of Harvard. Mr. Bollinger's enemies are a sign of his character. How he handles them will be a test of his backbone...
The New York Times OTOH confined their editorializing to a "report" in the Education section:
.... Mr. Bollinger came under intense attack in September when Columbia invited the Iranian president, who has aroused strong passions by confronting the West and denying the Holocaust. Mr. Bollinger defended the invitation, then introduced the Iranian leader with a 10-minute verbal assault.Unhappiness with that confrontation has simmered on campus ever since, and many professors said it provided the main impetus for the faculty petition.
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) immediately responded to their colleagues with this Statement of Dissent
1. That the administration has failed to make clear that interventions by outside groups "will not be tolerated": We agree that tenure reviews must be conducted exclusively by peer academics within the university and at other academic institutions. However, the university has responsibilities to its students, alumni, donors, and outside community. When nonacademics and outsiders encounter or hear about what they consider inappropriate forms of teaching, allegations of intimidation or harassment, or the distortion of basic historical or scientific facts, they are justified in expressing, and entitled by the First Amendment to express, their objections. No university administration has the power to prevent such expression.2. That President Bollinger's introductory remarks to Ahmadinejad “allied the university with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq”: As the publicly available transcript confirms, these remarks addressed sequentially: 1) Holocaust denial; 2) Ahmadinejad's stated intent to destroy Israel; 3) Iran's funding of terrorism; 4) Iran's proxy war against US troops in Iraq; and 5) Iran's nuclear program. Only the fourth item refers to the war in Iraq, and only in the context of Iran's role in financing and arming terrorist attacks against our troops.
3. That "the President has publicly taken partisan political positions concerning the politics of the Middle East, without apparent expertise in this area or consultation with faculty who teach and undertake research in this area” : We follow President Bollinger’s public statements closely. The only one that may be characterized as concerning the politics of the Middle East is his denunciation of the British University and College Union’s proposed boycott of Israeli academics, which he described as “antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy." This statement is actually not about the political problems of the Middle East; it is precisely what President Bollinger is accused of not providing: a vigorous defense of academic freedom, based on his recognition that denying such freedom to any individual or group endangers the entire academic enterprise.
The signature names here are - let's face it - less Muslim, more Jewish.
Efrat Aharonovich, Kenneth Altman, Elizabeth Anisfeld, Paul S. Appelbaum, Marc S. Arkovitz, Jeffrey A. Ascherman, Mitchell C. Benson, Mitchell F. Berman, Bernard Berofsky, Nehama R. Bersohn, Joan Birman, Adam Heath Cannon, Charles Calomiris, Mark Cane, Myron L. Cohen, Jonathan David, Len Druyan, Barry A. Farber, Awi Federgruen, Scott A. Fink, Philip Genty, Michael D. Gershon, Michael E. Goldberg, Robert R. Goodman, Victor R. Grann, Linda Granowetter, Jonathan L. Gross, Jeffrey Helzner, Ralph Holloway, Barry Honig, Allen I. Hyman, Judith S. Jacobson, Sandra Kahn, Eric R. Kandel, Ran Kivetz, Oscar Lebwohl, Jonathan Levav, Moshe Levison, Nahum Melumad, Elizabeth Midlarsky, Abraham Monk, Alfred I. Neugut, Walter Neumann, Peter Ozsvath, Evan Picoult, Ruth Raphaeli-Slivko, Irina Reyfman, Jay Rothschild, Samuel Schacher, Alan F. Segal, Alan A. Seplowitz, Neil S. Shachter, Howard Shuman, Ethel S. Siris, Mervyn W. Susser, Robert N. Taub, Olivier Toubia, Warren D. Widmann, Eric D. Zarahn, Assaf Zeevi, Thomas D. Zweifel.
Before you conclude that this "issue" represents an ideological front in the war of Islamic aggression on Judeo-Christian civilization, let me assure you that every one of these professors would most likely deny such a thing and would think the very suggestion crass. After, we're not living in the Middle Ages. We are ever so much more Modern & Sophisticated than that.
QUIZ: Who said?
"The ink of the scholaris more sacred than
the blood of the martyr.
"
Posted by: a | Monday, 19 November 2007 at 10:52 AM
Posted by: Godefroi | Tuesday, 20 November 2007 at 04:03 PM