The NY Times Silences Columbia Students to Get its Story

The story is emerging that the New York Times is a newspaper with far less professional standards and integrity than the Columbia University student newspaper, the "Spectator."

A few days ago, the Columbia University administration released its whitewash report from its "investigation" into campus bias and outright anti-Semitism by some faculty members. Naturally, the officials could not find any, in spite of a large number of media reports documenting the misbehavior of anti-Semitic professors and their mistreating Jewish students at Columbia.

But the story of the release of the report was a separate disgrace and scandal in and of itself. Columbia reportedly attempted to control access by the media to the report and conditioned access on recipients NOT INTERVIEWING ANY COLUMBIA STUIDENTS ABOUT IT! The NY Times agreed to the extortion, which is why there are no students interviewed in reaction to the report in the paper's coverage of it. The Columbia Spectator, a student paper, refused the condition. The NY Sun claims it simply stole the report to avoid the extortion. The adminsitration stonewalled Columbia students for hours to make it more difficult for them to comment on the report to the press. The administration has made it pretty clear that it considers "Columbians for Academic Freedom" to be Public Enemy Number One.

Campus J reports:

Megan Greenwell, editor-in-chief of the Spectator, told CampusJ in a phone interview that university spokesperson Susan Brown had proposed two "ground rules" for gaining early, exclusive access to the report. "We were not allowed to take the report...out of Low Libary," Greenwell recalled as the first rule, and said that Brown declared a second rule, saying "we will set up interviews for you with several administrators, however, you may not spread this to anybody who has not seen the report." Greenwell said the clear implication of Brown's second ground rule was that students could not be interviewed for the story....Asked if Brown had said that the Times promised not to run student quotes, Greenwell said "It was never explicit, but I’d say that that was pretty clearly the understanding." Greenwell asserted that when she asked Brown if the NYT had agreed to the conditions, Brown said "the Times had exactly the same ground rules as you do."

The editor of the student paper said, "If the Spectator were to run a story that only included the administration's opinion, that’s not journalism, that’s a university press release."

Meanwhile, Joseph Massad, one of the Professors named in the ad hoc faculty committee’s report on students’ claims of classroom intimidation who had his wrist lightly tapped, criticized yesterday the committee’s findings on two specific complaints lodged against him. Massad said in an e-mail message that he finds the report’s findings “inaccurate and unfair.” Massad also accused the committee of having “bowed to the very outside pressure which it criticizes as well as the pressure coming its way from the Columbia administration.”

Commenting on the whitewash, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz said he sees the pertinent issue as the right for students to express dissenting opinions in the classroom, even, and especially if, those opinions are in support of the State of Israel:

"The most significant issue at Columbia is academic freedom. Students should have the right to express views on Israel without fear of retaliation or exclusion from classes by professors. The most significant alleged violation at Columbia was when professor Joseph Massad allegedly said to his student that unless she acknowledged Israeli barbarity she could not remain in the classroom. That clearly violates the student’s academic freedom."

To get an objective analysis of the report, forget the NY Times and go to the Columbia student site and a Columbia student blog.