[Peace-discuss] Columbia Panel Reports No Proof of Anti-Semitism

[David Green]

March 31, 2005
Columbia Panel Reports No Proof of Anti-Semitism
By KAREN W. ARENSON 
 
n ad hoc faculty committee charged with investigating
complaints that pro-Israel Jewish students were
harassed by pro-Palestinian professors at Columbia
University said it had found one instance in which a
professor "exceeded commonly accepted bounds" of
behavior when he became angry at a student who he
believed was defending Israel's conduct toward
Palestinians.

But the report, obtained by The New York Times and
scheduled for release today, said it had found "no
evidence of any statements made by the faculty that
could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic." 

It did, however, describe 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.

It said that Columbia's failure to address various
student complaints quickly had had a "deeply negative
impact" on the university as a whole, had led to an
"acute erosion of trust between faculty and students,"
and had left Columbia vulnerable to criticism from
outside groups with their own agendas.

The committee was formed during the winter at the
request of Columbia's president, Lee C. Bollinger,
after the release of a videotape in which Columbia and
Barnard students said they had been intimidated by
professors of Middle Eastern studies both in and out
of class. The tape sparked widespread concern among
Jewish groups, alumni, trustees and activists
concerned about academic freedom.

Pro-Israel students said they made the video because
they had been unable for several years to get
administrators to take their complaints seriously. The
film was backed by the David Project, a pro-Israel
group based in Boston.

Mr. Bollinger called the report "thorough and
comprehensive" and said that he endorsed its findings.
He said that within the next few weeks he would
announce the steps Columbia planned in response.

Many have already questioned the makeup of the ad hoc
committee, pointing out that several members have
expressed anti-Israel views. The committee included
Farah Griffin and Jean E. Howard, professors of
English and comparative literature; Lisa Anderson,
dean of the School of International and Public
Affairs; Mark Mazower, a history professor; and Ira
Katznelson, a professor of political science and
history and the committee's chairman.

Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, was an
adviser.

Some of the report's harshest criticism was directed
at Columbia itself, for not having clear processes
that would have allowed earlier action on faculty and
student complaints.

"As a result of these failures," the report said,
"outside advocacy groups devoted to purposes
tangential to those of the university were able to
intervene to take up complaints expressed by some
students."

The report (which is to be posted on Columbia's Web
site today) noted that although often combative
exchanges occurred between pro-Palestinian professors
and pro-Israel students, no students received lower
grades because of their views. 

But the committee said that after meeting with 62
students, faculty members, administrators and alumni,
and reading written submissions from more than 60
others, they were most concerned with three alleged
instances of intimidation, all from the 2001-02 school
year before Mr. Bollinger took office.

The most credible, the committee found, was an
incident involving Professor Joseph Massad, who was
teaching a class on Palestinian and Israeli politics.
According to the report, a student, Deena Shanker,
recalled asking if it was true that Israel sometimes
gave a warning before a bombing so that people would
not be hurt. She said the professor blew up, telling
her, "If you're going to deny the atrocities being
committed against Palestinians, then you can get out
of my classroom!"

The report said that the professor had "denied
emphatically that this incident took place" and had
told the committee that he would never ask a student
to leave his class. And it said that others in the
"particularly tense" class differed about whether the
incident, which was never formally reported, had taken
place.

But the committee said that in the end, it found the
account "credible" and concluded that the professor's
"rhetorical response to her query exceeded commonly
accepted bounds by conveying that her question merited
harsh public criticism." 

Reached last evening, Professor Massad said he had
just finished reading the report and was still trying
to figure out what it meant.

"I clearly disagree with their findings," he said. "I
deny the allegations. I do not know on what basis they
found them credible. It was a he-said she-said thing.
It is unclear on what basis they made the
determination that one claim was more credible than
the other."

He added that there had been a lack of due process.

The committee said it could not reach similar
determinations about two other troubling episodes.

One involved an Israeli student's account of an
off-campus lecture by Professor Massad. The student,
Tomy Schoenfeld, told the committee that after he
identified himself as a former Israeli soldier, the
professor asked him twice how many Palestinians he had
killed. According to the committee, Professor Massad
said that he had no recollection of the event and that
he had never met Mr. Schoenfeld. In the end, the
committee concluded that the incident fell "into a
challenging gray zone, neither in the classroom, where
the reported behavior would not be acceptable, nor in
an off-campus political event, where it might fit
within a not unfamiliar range of give and take
regarding charged issues."

The final incident involved the course "Introduction
to Islamic Civilization" taught by George Saliba. The
report said that a student, Lindsay Shrier, claimed
the professor told her after class that she was not a
Semite because she had green eyes, and therefore had
"no claim to the land of Israel."

The professor told the committee that the student
might have misunderstood an argument he often made
about the absurdity of making historical claims for
land based on religious premises. The committee
concluded that "however regrettable a personal
reference might have been, it is a good deal more
likely to have been a statement that was integral to
an argument about the uses of history and lineage than
an act approaching intimidation."

The committee recommended that Columbia institute
accessible and transparent grievance procedures
"geared to the speedy resolution of complaints and the
appropriate protection of privacy." It said the
procedures should be well publicized. It also called
on the university to improve its advising system, and
stressed the responsibility of both faculty and
students to maintain civil discourse.

"One major lesson for us," Mr. Bollinger said, "is
that if you do not have adequate grievance procedures,
problems you could have dealt with cascade into bigger
problems." But a second lesson, he said, was that the
conflict "was not only about the claims of
intimidation, but also about the actual debate over
the Middle East."