From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) KAREN W. ARENSON | New York Times | 24 March 2005 Faced with complaints that Columbia University has tolerated anti-Semitism and intimidation in its Middle East studies classes, Columbia's president said last night that academic freedom has some limits when it comes to the classroom and the broader educational experience. "We should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty members above every other value," the president, Lee C.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Toby Muse | Times Higher Education Supplement | 25 March 2005 The experience of a history professor refused entry to the US under new anti-terror laws is a blow to all those who support the free exchange of ideas, says Toby Muse Early in 2004, Dora Maria Tellez, a heroine of Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution and now a professor of history, applied for a visa to study in the US in preparation to teach at one of that country's most prestigious academic institutions, Harvard University's Divinity School.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) CNN | CNN.COM | 18 March 2005 BOULDER, Colorado (AP) -- Stacks of papers sit on a sun-drenched table in the home of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, some full of praise and others full of dark threats and unprintable insults. In one message, liberal scholar Noam Chomsky calls Churchill's achievements of inestimable value, while an e-mail in another pile warns: "If you ever come to Florida, I will personally bash your (expletive) brains in.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Terri Ginsberg |Zmag | 14 March 2005 On Sunday, March 6, Columbia University hosted a conference called "The Middle East and Academic Integrity on the American Campus." Despite its repeated and advertised calls for "balance" and "objectivity" in academic scholarship, the gathering exemplified nothing of academic integrity. The conference was sponsored by U.S. organizations which support the Israeli right wing, including Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Columbians for Academic Freedom, The David Project, Jewish Business Student Association, and Koleinu: Columbia Law Students for Israel, and all participants hailed solely from the political Right on the issue of Israel/Palestine.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) JACOB GERSHMAN | The New York Sun | 24 March 2005 A faculty rebellion is brewing at Columbia University against President Lee Bollinger over his handling of the university's investigation into the conduct of professors in the Middle East studies department. Leading the way is a former provost of the university, Jonathan Cole, who in a speech on Tuesday night before a restive gathering of professors and students strongly suggested that Mr.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Alisa Solomon | Forward | 4 March 2005 New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein should pay a visit to the City University of New York Graduate Center this week to see a telling and chillingly timely exhibit called "Activism and Repression: The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-42," which closes March 6. Contemplating this chronicle of shameful blacklists against City College teachers with dissenting political views might help him recognize the imprudence of his recent decision to summarily exclude a Columbia University professor from participating in teaching-development workshops on the Middle East.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Samara Kalk Derby | The Capital Times | 2 March 2005 Ward Churchill was defiant. He was bold. He was passionate. And he spent the better part of his 75-minute speech here defending controversial comments he made in a 3-year-old essay that has ignited a national firestorm in the past month. The University of Colorado-Boulder professor of ethnic studies deconstructed the oft-quoted line in which he compared the "
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Lisa Hirschmann | Columbia Spectator | 28 February 2005 The University Senate returned to its discussion of improving Columbia’s grievance procedures on Friday in response to the ongoing MEALAC controversy, but it began with President Bollinger’s first public criticism of the New York City Department of Education’s recent dismissal of Rashid Khalidi from a program for secondary school teachers on instruction about the Middle East.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) BROCK READ | Chronicle of Higher Education | 4 March 2005 The New York City Department of Education will prohibit a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University from appearing in an occasional training program for secondary-school teachers, citing the professor's criticism of Israel. Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, had spoken this month at one of a series of teacher-development workshops, paid for by the university, about Middle Eastern culture and politics.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) The Satya Interview with Ward Churchill | Satya Magazine | April 2004 Ward Churchill is perhaps one of the most provocative thinkers around. A Creek and enrolled Keetoowah Band Cherokee, Churchill is a longtime Native rights activist. He has been heavily involved in the American Indian Movement and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado and has served as a delegate to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations.