Victory at Columbia: 'No Evidence' of In-Class 'Anti-Semitism'

Chris Anderson reports for NYC Indymedia: "After receiving testimony from over 120 Columbia students, faculty members, administrators and alumni, an ad-hoc committee charged by University President Lee Bollinger to investigate claims of in class intimidation of pro-Israeli students found "no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic."  Read full story

The one sour note is that Professor Massad has been singled out for exceeding "commonly accepted bounds" of classroom conduct despite rave reviews from students of all political orientations.

The right is using patriotism against Ward Churchill in Colorado and Zionism against Middle Eastern Studies in New York.

This is a serious victory for academic integrity and a set-back for the hard right's campaign of academic purges. The larger problems remain. Counterpunch recently featured a story about Columbia's Zionist-dominated law school and outside of the MEALAC program, the fight is going full steam.

Comments

[Christopher Day]

Burningman,

The blog is great. Well chosen and interesting articles. Good commentary. I look forward to an escalation it it traffic. Bravo. I'd lose the grey and return to the white background though for a little less eye-strain.

[the burningman]

the traffic is growing very quickly. This month it has grown from effectively nothing to hundreds of hits a day.

Biggest source of traffic? Google searches for "Bob Avakian," "Nina Hartley" and "Burningman." This bodes well for the future.

I thought the gray would be less eye strain than white. In any case, the ending of the Beta model isn't complete. I still have to map the domian and properly name the blog. Every white person under 30 I talk to just thinks of bongos in the Nevada desert... when I'm just a man on fire.