Something’s happenin’ here

Both yesterday and today the Columbia Daily Spectator has run first-rate commentaries on “Mogadishu” Professor Nicholas de Genova. Megan Romigh condemns both de Genova and the Columbia administration: “The university soapbox.” Colin Probert also raises the issue of institutional responsibility for de Genova’s sickening statement: “Dissent without dignity.”
Romigh on the Columbia administration: “Columbia’s administration is just as much to blame for the reaction to De Genova’s ‘a million Mogadishus’ remark as De Genova himself. It is both disappointing and disgusting that a university that adds as its tagline ‘in the City of New York’ does not take a more powerful stand against such anti-American comments. Even more alarming is that a federally funded university allows hate-infused comments such as these to go unsanctioned. Bollinger’s 200-word statement is hardly an acceptable response for such an extreme diatribe against this country and those who defend our right to freedom.”
Probert on de Genova’s statement: “[I]t was filthy and abusive, a verbal mortar shell lobbed indiscriminately from a distance too remote to be challenged by any honest standard. When De Genova gagged up Husseinian propaganda all over the interior of Low he did so as a member of the faculty, polluting the peaceful message of the ‘teach-in’ with a craving for the deaths of millions of Americans–some of whom are parents of Columbia University students. This is a profound betrayal of trust between student and teacher, and it is unacceptable at a place such as this.”
Thomas Sowell, as always, provides invaluable assistance in helping us understand what’s happening here: “Academia and the war.”