Columbia President Passes Buck on Noose Incident

Malena Amusa

Columbia President Passes Buck on Noose Incident

The president of Columbia University Lee C. Bollinger is trying to distance Columbia from its graduate Teacher’s College where the recent noose hanging outside a Black professor’s office took place. In a letter to campus, he wrote:

“As most of you now know, a terrible incident of bias occurred at Teachers College yesterday, directed at a member of the faculty. Teachers College is a cherished affiliate of Columbia University with its own president, Susan Fuhrman, to whom I have offered our support and assistance. We may be two independent institutions, but we are one community; and we stand together in our commitment to oppose the frightening sentiments that lay behind this act.”

Here, Bollinger hesitates to totally embrace the Teacher’s College because he calls it an “affiliate.” But the Teacher’s College is a graduate program of Columbia, as much as the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism I attend.

Further, his letter is a careful condemnation that reads so cautiously, it doesn’t come close to calling event what it is: an atrocious act of pedestrian racism. So why is Bollinger calling this a “bias incident? No where in the letter does he marry the words “hate” and “crime.” Does he know his referencing the threat of a lynching as “sentiments” is a naive understatement?

My guess is after Iran’s president controversial visit to Columbia two weeks ago, Bollinger is struggling to keep his hands clear of the left. With right wingers boasting cutting funds to Columbia, Bollinger is so obviously reluctant to fight using any progressive rhetoric.

But in this, Bollinger is messing up left and right. With the noose hanging, he’s holding back too much and missing an opportunity to join a booming civil rights movement. And with Iran he said too much. During the meeting with Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bollinger’s so-called free-speech forum was undermined by his American exceptionalism and lack of critical self-reflection. Bollinger was right to call out the Holocaust denier on his egregious gender and policy record. But to save words like “cruel and petty dictator,” just for Iran rings of a sad inattention to American politics that, though different from Iran’s, have in common: rogue patriarchal order, dubious laws against gays and lesbians, and overall, unfortunate attempts to deny others self-determination.

Posted at 11:25 AM, Oct 12, 2007 in Permalink | View Comments

Comments

While I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment of your post, it's worth noting that Bollinger is correct on one count: Teachers College a separate institution from Columbia University. Like Barnard, UTS, and JTS, TC has its own president, board of trustees, and endowment—none of which fall under the control of President Bollinger. The on-again-off-again appending of "Columbia University" to its name (i.e. - "Teachers College, Columbia University") signifies that it is an affiliate of the University (like BC, UTS, and JTS), falling under the degree-awarding umbrella of Columbia University but not under its direct institutional authority. (There is a discussion of this bizarre and tenuous relationship on TC's wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Teachers_College%2C_Columbia_University.) So while Bollinger may have a moral imperative to denounce the incident forcefully, he has no control over disciplinary proceedings or the specific institutional reforms that TC may pursue as a result of this incident. The same does not apply to the Journalism School, which is a core school of Columbia University and whose dean answers directly to President Bollinger. Certainly the argument can be made that Bollinger's statement was weak in the knees, but let's be clear about what he can and can't do as president of Columbia.