The editorial board of the Columbia Spectator weighs-in today on the highly critical open letter more than 100 faculty members delivered to president Lee Bollinger earlier this week. The letter, among other things, accuses Bollinger of failing to adequately protect the tenure process from interference by outside partisan interests.
“The University must reaffirm that while the marketplace of ideas may expose professors to criticism, the intrusion of non-academic pressure on the tenure process is unacceptable,” reads the Spectator editorial. “It is essential that administrators make clear publicly that faculty review cannot -- and will not -- be hijacked by those with purely political motives.”
Over at his New Republic blog, Marty Peretz surveys the Middle East studies faculty at Columbia and unequivocally labels it “the primary academic center of hostility to Zionism and Israel in the United States.” This sentiment is echoed on the Commentary magazine Web site, where Noah Pollak, an editor at the Israeli policy journal Azure, celebrates a counter-letter that is also circulating in the Columbia community.