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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (8981)3/31/2005 11:46:18 PM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
CAF "Outraged" at Committee Report

Late last night, the Ad-Hoc Committee released its report detailing its findings after months long investigation into charges of intimidation levied against a handful of professors in the MEALAC department.

The conclusion: months of research were not necessary. The report treated seriously only three of the most widely publicized out of the well over 60 complaints brought before the committee.

In addition, the university attempted to control the media's reaction to the findings of the Ad-Hoc Committee by brokering a deal of exclusivity with the New York Times regarding the report. When approached by members of CAF to gain access to hear the reading of the Committee report, Susan Brown, the university spokesperson divulged that the university had granted the Times exclusive rights to read the report. In return for the right to see the report before anyone else, the New York Times agreed not to seek comment from students. The article was released before any students were even permitted to read the original report. The report was defined in the public consciousness by the university without any thought about its students.

Members of Columbians for Academic Freedom have expressed their outrage over the report which they consider nothing more than an elaborate whitewash.

Speaking to the New York Sun, which obtained a copy of the report last night in spite of the university’s best efforts to deny access to anyone other than Times and the Columbia Spectator, Ariel Beery, GS ’05 bemoaned the Committee’s overt neglect of the majority of complaints: “The report only focuses on three incidents, and we brought to them a lot more incidents that were not reported and they made no mention of them.”

The Sun has supported the student campaign for the past few months and today’s article criticizes the report for only considering three out of 60 allegations and instead investigating how a failure of the grievance procedure caused an “acute erosion of trust between faculty and students, and had left Columbia vulnerable to criticism from outside groups with their own agendas.”

The report placed the accusations in the context of the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the New York Times reported that the report described “a broader environment of incivility on campus, with pro-Israel students disrupting lectures on Middle Eastern studies and some faculty members feeling that they were being spied on.” The report also made clear that “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.” Yet, no charges of anti-Semitism were ever filed by students and CAF has never alleged anti-Semitism. The Sun, among other media outlets, has made such claims and is the claims and voice of the media to whom the report was clearly addressed.

The university's behavior in releasing the report is indicative of the committee's guiding philosophy that apparently places a higher value on Columbia's image than its students.

Denying students the right to see the report before the New York Times had published an article summarizing and defining the report to the public (the Times article was in fact published online late last night before any students even read the report) underscores the fact that the university’s investigation was foremost a response to mounting outside pressure and not motivated by concern for students' grievances. Columbians for Academic Freedom has made clear its intention to continue to advocate for students rights’ and academic freedom both in and out of the university community until its voice is heard and the administration deals appropriately with its claims.

Josh

campusj.com
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