Arab-Jewish War at Columbia: A Personal Take

New York Magazine is out with a long piece about "Columbia Unbecoming," a student documentary, and the issue behind it -- the harassment of Jewish students by professors in the university's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

Steven Mensashi of The American Scene thinks New York is biased toward the faculty.  Phoebe Maltz finds a little more balance, but not much.  There are some priceless comments already up at her site -- have a look.

Possible bias aside -- most of what's reported in the article itself is pretty staggering.  Too much to report here.  Read the whole thing.  There are the usual mealy defenses of academic freedom (though university president Lee Bollinger comes off well in his final quote).  And there's Professor Khalidi, among the accused, explaining the academic value of his, ah, stance:

"...Whereas kids from, I don’t know, Teaneck. Or Scarsdale. Or Levittown. Or Long Island City. Many of them have never been exposed to a dissonant idea, a different idea, as far as the Middle East is concerned. And so you have a situation where it’s going to be problematic.”

"Problematic" -- that wonderful academic word.  And please do note the geographic placeholders for "Jew."

Here's what gets me.  A while ago -- say, 20-odd years -- I was a Jewish student at Columbia.  And I spent four years there being exposed to dissonant, different ideas -- including a couple of tours through the Qur'an, and Sufism, and Islamic art and culture.  And somehow this happened without anyone asking me how many Palestinians I'd killed.  Or asking me to use "prevent" in a sentence -- as in, "the Israeli Army prevents ambulances from going into refugee camps."  Or telling me that I couldn't advance a claim to Israel because my eyes were green.

Well, you know, it was a simple, naive time.  Identity politics was barely on the horizon.  People tolerated each other.  And they could -- because they had nothing "problematic" to deal with.  Other than the Iranian revolution, and the hostage crisis, and Sabra and Shatila. 

Thank heaven we're more sophisticated than that now.