Dershowitz: Columbia Faculty Encourage Terror

Even Alan Dershowitz can see the obvious bias at Columbia. If he can see that, why is it the rest of the left refuses to and continues to support terror? - Sailor

With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005 1:18 p.m. EST
NewsMax.com

Dershowitz: Columbia Faculty Encourage Terror

There is a war going on over the Middle East – right in the middle of Manhattan, at Columbia University.

The school's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, known as MEALAC, has been credibly accused of anti-Semitism and intimidating pro-Israel students (Some Jewish students have even made a documentary, "Columbia Unbecoming," which includes interviews with the cowed students.)

In fact, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told an audience at Columbia, the faculty of MEALAC go further than merely being anti-Israel; they actively encourage Islamic terrorism, reports the New York Sun.

Columbia is the university that raised $4 million – including a contribution from the United Arab Emirates – to create the Edward Said endowed chair in Arab studies.

Dershowitz, speaking to a full house at Columbia, reminded those gathered that Said was an extremist, and he ripped the university as a whole on the issue of its anti-Israel bias.

"The kind of hatred that one hears on campuses like Columbia – and let me say, especially Columbia – is a barrier to peace," Mr. Dershowitz said. "They are encouraging the terrorists. They tell the terrorists you will have academic support even if you oppose the peace process."

"This is the most unbalanced university that I have come across when it comes to all sides of the Middle East conflict being presented," he said. "I have never seen a university with as much faculty silence."

To back up Dershowitz's point, the New York Sun reports that two authors attended a Columbia panel on the Middle East conflict last week entitled "One State or Two? Alternative Proposals for Middle East Peace."

In the guise of talking peace, Sol Stern and Fred Siegel were witness to Columbia professors like Rashid Khalidi, the recipient of the endowed Said chair, and Joseph Massad opening wide the "floodgates of hatred," with Massad "demanding of one Israeli student, 'How many Palestinians did you kill today?'" and using "the phrase 'racist Israeli state' more than two dozen times."

Dershowitz blasted ivory-tower elitists for everything from their silence to trying to divest from Israel, singling out Massad, "who in 2003 called on the university to divest itself of financial holdings in companies that support Israel," reports the Sun.

"Anybody who advocates for divesting only from the Jewish state ... at a time when Iraq was posing a great threat to the world, when Iran was posing great threats ... when China is oppressing million of Tibetans, when the Kurds are still denied independence and statehood, to single out only Israel for divestiture at that point in time cannot be explained by neutral political, even ideological consideration," Dershowitz said.

He added, "I'm appalled at how many professors at Columbia University privately support Israel, and privately support many of the students, but are publicly afraid to speak out."


For a solid hour, Dershowitz ran up one side of the Columbia faculty and down the other, saying at one point that peace in Israel has a better chance than it does on campus right now.

University president Lee Bollinger did put together a committee to look into complaints about the MEALAC, but Dershowitz pulled rank, so to speak, and warned that if Bollinger's group came to a "biased" conclusion, he would get a panel of Nobel Prize winners together to look into the Jewish students' complaints.