Kudos for the Columbia Spectator
[I, too, want to commend the Spectator for its excellent supply of information on the Columbia/David Project/MEALAC coverage. It is precisely such emotively loaded matters that do, indeed, need the light of day and balanced treatment. And as one who was thrown into the middle of disputes, myself, as a student editor back when in the McCarthy era, I can imaginatively resonate with the students trying to do justice to all here.
Let me add a few specifics of my own. I am personally a critic of the extremists on both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I am empathetic with the paranoia of those who have faced 2 millennia of Christian pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust. It is ironic that the conflict there now is with Muslims who were much more hospitable to the Jews than Christians in the past (as I understand the history) -- the expulsion of both from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella being emblematic. Thus, I work with and have good email friends among those on both sides of the green line who pursue peaceful means for achieving harmony there. I oppose such destructive things as boycotts that only exacerbate the conflict with further economic and ideological impulses to fight back against injustice. And certainly Zionism, which means many different things to different factions, is not to be blindly equated with racism, nor is criticism of Israeli excesses and settlement and wall building to be equated with anti-Semitism.
The David Project, itself, looks to me to be a junior version of AIPAC, which is not something to be proud of. I saw no credible evidence that Joseph Massad was in any way abusing his students:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/
Perhaps all have learned a bit from the encounter and perhaps the Columbia administration, inexperienced with things that we have been living and working with for many decades and more here in this city of immigrants, will catch up and begin to do it better. At Brooklyn College several decades ago our faculty and students, independently of and in the face of initial administrative distrust, organized our own Multi-Cultural Action Committee that has actively mediated our ethnic conflicts -- we had Mayer Kahanna complicating things for us in those early days along with distributors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion anti-Semitic screed that had been contrived by the Tzarist regime enforcers. Renate Bridenthal, herself a child refugee from the Holocaust and 7 years at completing her undergrad studies at CCNY, one of our noted historians, put out a pamphlet along with students on this last which offered a model for unmasking and diffusing ugly ideological attacks. The Spectator has done far better than the Times in serving this function.
I had better conclude with saying that Hentoff's commendation of the Spectator and criticisms of the Times are about all that I agree with either here or in many of his divergent views on civil liberties matters of late! As a former member of the ACLU advisory committee on church-state matters I have been there and seen it all and I have rarely found it wrong on the issues -- except back in the McCarthy days when there was some ugly yielding to the anti-communist mantras. Ed Kent]
.....................................................................
Liberty Beat
Columbia: The Awakening
Students accused of 'McCarthyism' have enabled all students to begin to be heard
by Nat Hentoff
April 25th, 2005 2:39 PM alert me by e-mail
write to us
e-mail story
printer friendly
Columbians for Academic Freedom: They would not be silenced (Bari Weiss, Ariel Beery, Daniella Kahane, and Aharon Horwitz).
photo: tinazimmer.com
We just want honesty. We want to feel comfortable expressing views in the classroom that might not be the views that professors themselves hold. We just want to make a safe and good educational environment. A Columbia student in the David Project film Columbia Unbecoming, which months ago ignited the international conflict about the university's Middle East studies department. Her face was not shown because she feared retaliation.
I believe change comes not from larger organizations, but from people who believe passionately in something and are willing to put themselves on the line for an ideal. And judging by the announcement of [Columbia's new] grievance procedure I think we've achieved many things in a remarkably short period of time without institutional support. Ariel Beery, a leader of the student group Columbians for Academic Freedom, The Jewish Week, April 15
Louis Brandeis was the wisest justice to have sat on the Supreme Court. He used to say, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." A courageous small number of students at Columbia are responsible for bringing sunlight to a long festering controversy concerning the university's Department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC).
On April 11, Columbia released a new set of students' grievance procedures, which, though flawed, did have this section:
"Complaints Involving a Faculty Member [include] (1) Failure to show appropriate respect in an instructional setting for the rights of others to hold opinions differing from their own; (2) Misuse of faculty authority to promote a political or social cause within an instructional setting; and (3) Conduct in the classroom or another instructional setting that adversely affects the learning environment."
Bari Weiss, 21, of Columbians for Academic Freedom, explained to The New York Sun's Jacob Gershman the significance of that last cause for student complaint: "[An] atmosphere of intellectual orthodoxy creates an environment where dissenters are turned into pariahs."
It's worth repeating something else Bari Weiss said [in my April 13-19 column, "Columbia Whitewashes"]: "We are doing this because we believe in the rights of all Columbia students to dissent without fear of abuse. Yes, this means for conservative students as well as left-wingers, for Zionists as well as anti-Zionists. . . . Criticizing professors does not violate their academic freedom or stifle debate. It only adds to it."
On Columbia's campus, these students were reviled by other students, and by some professors, for engaging in a "right-wing onslaught," for being "witch-hunters," and for engaging in "McCarthyism."
I am of an age to have experienced McCarthyism directly from the source and his followers, as was revealed years later in my FBI files (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act). It was there I learned the names of the towns in Russia from which my late parents came, and in which I was accused of being at "radical" meetings in other countries where I've never been and of mocking FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The ravening senator from Wisconsin and his acolytes—including many in the press (anyone remember George Sokolsky?)—were dedicated to suppressing speech by "subversives," "fellow travelers," and other unpatriotic dissenters.
To call what the students in Columbians for Academic Freedom have been doing "McCarthyism" shows the need for much more teaching in schools, including universities, about that fear-ridden period of actual McCarthyism in American history—and what could happen again if there is another 9-11 or its equivalent.
Bari Weiss and her colleagues at Columbia have been expanding and deepening free speech, not suppressing it. As Ariel Beery notes:
"There are those people who just pass, and those who are willing to stake their claim in stepping outside of the normal discourse to spur the rest of society to action. Sometimes, it upsets people that [these] others seem to claim a right to be heard, and they feel like we're ruining it for everyone. But you have to stand up for what you believe sometimes."
I asked Ariel Beery for his reaction to Columbia's new grievance procedure, with its tiers of faculty committees, deans, vice presidents, the ombudsman office, and other officials before students can get fully heard. The most glaring of his objections is "the fact that students will not sit on any adjudicating committee."
It is a measure of how far Columbia has yet to go to secure free inquiry for everyone in its community that students are omitted from this mechanism that is designed to encourage them to report their grievances without fear of retaliation from, among others, faculty members.
In a later column, I will explore the persistent hostility of the New York Civil Liberties Union to these students who have "stepped outside the normal discourse" to awaken not only Columbia but also, I expect, other universities to recognize that academic freedom is also the essential right of students.
For this awakening at Columbia, much credit also goes to its student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator (Megan Greenwell, editor in chief). From the beginning of this furor, the Spectator has accurately and comprehensively carried the story forward and has kept its pages open to the conflicting views—including bylined commentaries—across the spectrum of this resounding clash that is far from ended. And the Spectator showed up The New York Times by rejecting the administration's offer to give it an exclusive, along with the Times, on the release of the faculty investigative report if it promised not to include comments on that report from the students who made that report necessary.
The Times accepted the bottom-of-the-deck deal; the Spectator scorned it. Said the Columbia Journalism Review Daily: "Given that in this case, student journalists on a campus newspaper upheld a higher standard of journalistic integrity than the 'paper of record,' the Times is right to be embarrassed."
The Spectator also beat the Times in covering the whole story.
Let me add a few specifics of my own. I am personally a critic of the extremists on both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I am empathetic with the paranoia of those who have faced 2 millennia of Christian pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust. It is ironic that the conflict there now is with Muslims who were much more hospitable to the Jews than Christians in the past (as I understand the history) -- the expulsion of both from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella being emblematic. Thus, I work with and have good email friends among those on both sides of the green line who pursue peaceful means for achieving harmony there. I oppose such destructive things as boycotts that only exacerbate the conflict with further economic and ideological impulses to fight back against injustice. And certainly Zionism, which means many different things to different factions, is not to be blindly equated with racism, nor is criticism of Israeli excesses and settlement and wall building to be equated with anti-Semitism.
The David Project, itself, looks to me to be a junior version of AIPAC, which is not something to be proud of. I saw no credible evidence that Joseph Massad was in any way abusing his students:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mealac/faculty/massad/
Perhaps all have learned a bit from the encounter and perhaps the Columbia administration, inexperienced with things that we have been living and working with for many decades and more here in this city of immigrants, will catch up and begin to do it better. At Brooklyn College several decades ago our faculty and students, independently of and in the face of initial administrative distrust, organized our own Multi-Cultural Action Committee that has actively mediated our ethnic conflicts -- we had Mayer Kahanna complicating things for us in those early days along with distributors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion anti-Semitic screed that had been contrived by the Tzarist regime enforcers. Renate Bridenthal, herself a child refugee from the Holocaust and 7 years at completing her undergrad studies at CCNY, one of our noted historians, put out a pamphlet along with students on this last which offered a model for unmasking and diffusing ugly ideological attacks. The Spectator has done far better than the Times in serving this function.
I had better conclude with saying that Hentoff's commendation of the Spectator and criticisms of the Times are about all that I agree with either here or in many of his divergent views on civil liberties matters of late! As a former member of the ACLU advisory committee on church-state matters I have been there and seen it all and I have rarely found it wrong on the issues -- except back in the McCarthy days when there was some ugly yielding to the anti-communist mantras. Ed Kent]
.....................................................................
Liberty Beat
Columbia: The Awakening
Students accused of 'McCarthyism' have enabled all students to begin to be heard
by Nat Hentoff
April 25th, 2005 2:39 PM alert me by e-mail
write to us
e-mail story
printer friendly
Columbians for Academic Freedom: They would not be silenced (Bari Weiss, Ariel Beery, Daniella Kahane, and Aharon Horwitz).
photo: tinazimmer.com
We just want honesty. We want to feel comfortable expressing views in the classroom that might not be the views that professors themselves hold. We just want to make a safe and good educational environment. A Columbia student in the David Project film Columbia Unbecoming, which months ago ignited the international conflict about the university's Middle East studies department. Her face was not shown because she feared retaliation.
I believe change comes not from larger organizations, but from people who believe passionately in something and are willing to put themselves on the line for an ideal. And judging by the announcement of [Columbia's new] grievance procedure I think we've achieved many things in a remarkably short period of time without institutional support. Ariel Beery, a leader of the student group Columbians for Academic Freedom, The Jewish Week, April 15
Louis Brandeis was the wisest justice to have sat on the Supreme Court. He used to say, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." A courageous small number of students at Columbia are responsible for bringing sunlight to a long festering controversy concerning the university's Department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC).
On April 11, Columbia released a new set of students' grievance procedures, which, though flawed, did have this section:
"Complaints Involving a Faculty Member [include] (1) Failure to show appropriate respect in an instructional setting for the rights of others to hold opinions differing from their own; (2) Misuse of faculty authority to promote a political or social cause within an instructional setting; and (3) Conduct in the classroom or another instructional setting that adversely affects the learning environment."
Bari Weiss, 21, of Columbians for Academic Freedom, explained to The New York Sun's Jacob Gershman the significance of that last cause for student complaint: "[An] atmosphere of intellectual orthodoxy creates an environment where dissenters are turned into pariahs."
It's worth repeating something else Bari Weiss said [in my April 13-19 column, "Columbia Whitewashes"]: "We are doing this because we believe in the rights of all Columbia students to dissent without fear of abuse. Yes, this means for conservative students as well as left-wingers, for Zionists as well as anti-Zionists. . . . Criticizing professors does not violate their academic freedom or stifle debate. It only adds to it."
On Columbia's campus, these students were reviled by other students, and by some professors, for engaging in a "right-wing onslaught," for being "witch-hunters," and for engaging in "McCarthyism."
I am of an age to have experienced McCarthyism directly from the source and his followers, as was revealed years later in my FBI files (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act). It was there I learned the names of the towns in Russia from which my late parents came, and in which I was accused of being at "radical" meetings in other countries where I've never been and of mocking FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The ravening senator from Wisconsin and his acolytes—including many in the press (anyone remember George Sokolsky?)—were dedicated to suppressing speech by "subversives," "fellow travelers," and other unpatriotic dissenters.
To call what the students in Columbians for Academic Freedom have been doing "McCarthyism" shows the need for much more teaching in schools, including universities, about that fear-ridden period of actual McCarthyism in American history—and what could happen again if there is another 9-11 or its equivalent.
Bari Weiss and her colleagues at Columbia have been expanding and deepening free speech, not suppressing it. As Ariel Beery notes:
"There are those people who just pass, and those who are willing to stake their claim in stepping outside of the normal discourse to spur the rest of society to action. Sometimes, it upsets people that [these] others seem to claim a right to be heard, and they feel like we're ruining it for everyone. But you have to stand up for what you believe sometimes."
I asked Ariel Beery for his reaction to Columbia's new grievance procedure, with its tiers of faculty committees, deans, vice presidents, the ombudsman office, and other officials before students can get fully heard. The most glaring of his objections is "the fact that students will not sit on any adjudicating committee."
It is a measure of how far Columbia has yet to go to secure free inquiry for everyone in its community that students are omitted from this mechanism that is designed to encourage them to report their grievances without fear of retaliation from, among others, faculty members.
In a later column, I will explore the persistent hostility of the New York Civil Liberties Union to these students who have "stepped outside the normal discourse" to awaken not only Columbia but also, I expect, other universities to recognize that academic freedom is also the essential right of students.
For this awakening at Columbia, much credit also goes to its student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator (Megan Greenwell, editor in chief). From the beginning of this furor, the Spectator has accurately and comprehensively carried the story forward and has kept its pages open to the conflicting views—including bylined commentaries—across the spectrum of this resounding clash that is far from ended. And the Spectator showed up The New York Times by rejecting the administration's offer to give it an exclusive, along with the Times, on the release of the faculty investigative report if it promised not to include comments on that report from the students who made that report necessary.
The Times accepted the bottom-of-the-deck deal; the Spectator scorned it. Said the Columbia Journalism Review Daily: "Given that in this case, student journalists on a campus newspaper upheld a higher standard of journalistic integrity than the 'paper of record,' the Times is right to be embarrassed."
The Spectator also beat the Times in covering the whole story.
posted by Ed Kent at 8:30 AM
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