COLUMBIA: A DUBIOUS NEIGHBOR
New York Post
Editorial
October 26, 2006 -- More than three weeks have passed since Columbia University hosted one of the most brazen attacks on free speech and academic freedom in recent memory. Since then, not a word of apology has been offered to those whose rights were trampled, nor an ounce of punishment meted out to the offenders.
The only thing, in fact, that Columbia's administrators have done is to assure students, alumni, faculty and others who care deeply about the university that an "investigation" is under way.
But with weeks gone by and a public relations office deflecting calls on the matter, it's starting to look like the term "investigation" may be a euphemism for "cover-up."
What happened that Wednesday night is, after all, very clear: Just as Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal-immigration Minuteman Project, opened his remarks at a campus event sponsored by the college's Republican Club, thuggish bullies bum-rushed the stage and physically attacked the speaker.
The assault clearly was premeditated. They wouldn't let Gilchrist utter a word before being hustled off.
There's no need for interpretation, by the way: The whole thing is on video.
Apart from some boilerplate rhetoric immediately after the attack, university President Lee Bollinger has had little of substance to say.
There has been no formal apology to Gilchrist.
There has been no invitation for him to return to Columbia for a do-over.
Bollinger - though a First Amendment specialist - certainly has not been pounding his bully pulpit.
And Columbia won't even discuss the investigation.
Bollinger, of course, has been anything but reticent about Columbia's plans to expand its northern Manhattan campus - an undertaking that will require considerable forbearance from the university's neighbors, and the city.
The project seems worthy, despite the disruptions it will cause.
But if Bollinger can't - or, worse, won't - come expeditiously to terms with the young brownshirts roaming his campus, then it's fair to wonder what kind of a neighbor Columbia really is.
Not a good one, it seems. |
