Columbia is Out-Paced

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04022007/postopinion/editorials/columbia_is_out_paced_editorials_.htm

Monday, April 02, 2007 Last Update: 06:20 PM EDT

COLUMBIA IS OUT-PACED

April 2, 2007 -- Well, whaddya know? A university president - Pace's David Caputo - actually apologized last week for his school's campaign to quash politically incorrect speech on campus.

That sure sets him apart from Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University - which announced a mere wrist-slap for lefty students who stormed a stage last fall and attacked a speaker who backs tougher U.S. borders.

OK, Caputo's apology took some prodding (particularly by this page). But the Pace prez still said he's sorry "for any action" that suggested his deans sought to block the showing of a documentary that irked Muslim students.

Hillel, a Jewish group at the school, wanted to show "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." But the group's head, Michael Abdurakhmanov, said two deans warned him that if the screening took place, Hillel members could become suspects in an unrelated event at Pace involving the desecration of the Koran.
Plans for the screening were called off.

"I want both to assure [Hillel's members] that no such coercion or intimidation was intended and to apologize for any action that may have unfortunately led to that belief," Caputo said. He even mentioned Abdurakhmanov by name.

Whether the coercion was "intended," of course, is debatable.

But, hey, let bygones be bygones.

An apology of this kind on an American campus - in left-wing New York City, no less - is rare enough.

Caputo deserves praise.

Not so, Columbia's president.

Last Saturday, The Washington Post nominated Bollinger to its board of directors, citing his "expertise on a combination of free speech and education issues."

Hmm. It might better have noted his acquiescence in letting speech be muzzled.

That was on display last week, when word leaked out that Columbia has slapped seven students with "minor" offenses after they physically attacked Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project last October.

As a result of the attack, Gilchrist was unable to deliver a speech he'd been invited to give - one that some students wanted to hear.

Because Columbia's aspiring brown-shirts didn't agree with Gilchrist - his group opposes illegal immigration and wants Washington to shore up U.S. borders to stop it - they sought to silence him.

And they succeeded.

Now, you'd think a champion of free speech - if that's what Bollinger is supposed to be - would have come down hard on the punks.

Indeed, he could have: Columbia's student code says any action that "disrupts a university function or renders its continuation impossible" is considered a "serious" offense, with possible punishments of suspension and expulsion.

Instead, Columbia charged the students merely with "minor" offenses, ensuring only modest penalties, if any. In the event, according to reports in the school paper, Columbia issued nothing stiffer than a few "letters of censure."

So light were the punishments that some malefactors are citing it as a victory.

Nor has there been any effort to have Gilchrist's message heard at Columbia.

Contrast that with Pace's decision to reschedule "Obsession" for April 18.

Or Brown University's efforts to have Nonie Darwish speak there recently. (Darwish is an Egyptian-American whose criticism of Islam prompted Muslims at Brown to thwart a speech she planned to give there last year.)

As we have noted here in the past, this makes Columbia - which is seeking to expand into the Harlem community - something less than the good neighbor it now pretends to be.

The events at Pace and Columbia were shameful - but, then, kids will be kids.
Caputo rose to the challenge.

Bollinger did not.