Submitted by Alex, Sep 25, 2007 22:18

Most of the people on Columbia's campus are kids. There is nothing wrong with that. A clear majority of the Columbia students that I have known are not unlike those that you would find at any other major university. Their parents expect them to do well in school and to get a good job after they graduate. Is this on a par with the sort of pressure that our soldiers in Iraq experience? Of course not, but I think that most Columbia students recognize their good fortune. To be sure, there are some really foolish students at Columbia, and this is now obvious to the entire country. They are a problem at Columbia in the same way that drunken frat guys are a problem at some Big 10 schools, but our fools present a much more serious challenge to Columbia than drunken frat guys do at a school like Penn State. Why? It is because in the case of the former the behavior in question finds significant support among the faculty in some departments. If you want to understand the real problem at Columbia, then you need to look at how the postcolonialism/literary theory/bullshit crowd has been allowed to gain power at Columbia. Will this continue? I think that some people expected that things like the Sokal Affair of 1996 would expose this part of academia for what it is. Clearly this did not happen at Columbia, at least not in a significant way. Part of the problem might be attributed to the fact that scientists, along with other academics who respect rational thought, tend not to make as much noise beyond their research area (perhaps because they are too busy doing work). Maybe Columbia's latest foot-in-mouth-head-up-asshole move to invite Ahmadinejad to campus will prove to be the turning point. I'll believe it when I see it.

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