Yom Kippur at Columbia

Jewish students at Columbia who went to their computers after breaking the fast for Yom Kippur were met Saturday evening with a link on the Drudge Report to an interview with the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs saying that he'd have been happy to welcome Hitler to the campus. The interview, aired on Fox News, was with John Coatsworth. He is seen in the Day of Atonement broadcast chuckling like a veritable Mearsheimer or Walt. Could he be oblivious to the impact his words were going to have in a Jewish community already on notice that its sensibilities were of little rank to either the president or the faculty of the university? Columbia, it seems, is bound and determined to honor the president of Iran and provide him with a platform to agitate against our country, and Israel, in midst of a war in which our GIs are facing Iranian backed forces on the field of battle.

Dean Coatsworth seems to be laboring under the illusion that had Columbia actually hosted Hitler in the late 1930s, World War II and the war against the Jews might have been prevented. The dean appears to be ignorant of history. The archives of the New York Times disclose that in December 1933, Columbia's president, Nicholas Butler, extended an invitation to Hitler's ambassador, Hans Luther. A protest was made by the Social Problems Club, which, according to the report in the Times, said: "Inviting the Nazi envoy to lecture on the foreign policy of his government and giving him an official reception means not only failing in our duty to oppose the Nazi onslaught on culture and in our duty to defend our German colleague but signifies, if not an open endorsement of the Nazi actions, at least placing their principles on the same level with other viewpoints."

In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia "does not ask what a man's opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion. There is no subject which a company of scholars such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners, and to hear fully discussed and debated." When the "well-mannered" Herr Luther made his appearance on Morningside Heights, it seems only to have whetted the Nazi lust — and to have established a precedent for abasement. It turned out that the only kind of intercourse the Nazis understood was the kind conducted by General Eisenhower, who not only liberated Europe but went on to Morningside Heights, where he brought great distinction to the presidency of the University.

Of how much damage has been done by the latest affair New Yorkers are only beginning to get a sense. Everywhere we called yesterday, responsible men and women in government — and in community institutions — were wrestling with the question of what to do about Columbia. The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, sent a letter, prompting many to look at her in a new and admiring light. The chairman of the Council's finance committee, David Weprin, was telling reporters that Mr. Bollinger "made a big mistake" and suggesting the Council would look at "everything involving Columbia." Our advice would be that it start with Columbia's little-noticed admission last week that the university did not initiate the invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad but that the invitation was initiated by the Iranian embassy at the U.N. It is part of the same diplomatic service on whose premises in Buenos Aires the Amia bombing was plotted in Argentina.

Most ominously for Columbia, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, has started thinking about the problems at Morningside Heights. "There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall," Mr. Silver told our Jacob Gershman yesterday. "Obviously, there's some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of … knowing that this is that kind of an institution." Mr. Silver faulted Columbia for "attempting to legitimize this individual," saying, "We have an obligation because of the U.N. to allow him to come to this country. It doesn't mean we have to make him welcome. We don't have to give him a forum."

No doubt such warnings are going to be met with a lot of palaver about the First Amendment and how there is precedent for American law that — once governments are well-launched in funding private institutions they can't withdraw already committed funding over disagreements on substance. Mayor Giuliani had his head handed to him when he tried to do that at the Brooklyn Museum, when it took an image of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung and pornographic pictures and tried to palm it off as a painting. Columbia's Mr. Bollinger is himself one of the premier First Amendment lawyers in the country. But presumably Mr. Silver and his counterparts on the city council will be aware of these suits and, in respect of Columbia, choose their battles carefully. Those who have tangled with Mr. Silver know he is one canny adversary when he feels the interests of his caucus have been placed in jeopardy.