Columbia’s Diversity of Hate Speech

Boy, Columbia University sure has had a few good weeks of publicity. The storied Ivy League institution is turning into a latter-day Duke lacrosse team, for crying out loud.

Perhaps you heard, dear reader, that a delightful chap called Mahmoud Ahmedinejad spoke at Columbia. As it turns out, Mr. Ahmedinejad is the president of a country called Iran and harbors some views that are a bit—how to put it?—extreme.

For instance, he isn’t quite certain that the Holocaust happened and appears to aim to make sure a contemporary Holocaust occurs via the utter elimination of Israel. In addition, Mr. Ahmadinejad denies the existence of homosexuals in his fine nation, even though his government executes people for same-sex inclinations.

We know what you’re thinking, dear reader: What a charming fellow to have speak at your local university. And the bigwigs at Columbia fully agreed with your fine sentiment. Thus President Lee Bollinger invited Mr. Ahmadinejad to campus, only to browbeat him in his introduction, as a way of lamely saving face.

Oh, but it gets worse. As you undoubtedly read, an African-American professor at Columbia’s teachers college arrived at her office and was greeted by a noose hanging on her door. Very, very nice, eh? Perhaps force-feeding students all that moralistic blather about “enforcing diversity” is paying off?

As if this weren’t bad enough, now a local television station reports that anti-Semitic graffiti has been found in a bathroom at Columbia—with swastika and all. Yes, yes: The trifecta of hate at dear old Columbia!

This made us wonder: How do the authorities know that the graffito in question isn’t merely preliminary notes of one of Columbia’s famed Middle East Studies professors? After all, pretty much everything Joseph Massad writes is tantamount to a swastika. Perhaps Professor Massad likes to use shorthand when he’s on the john?

Any minute now, the diversity police at Columbia University are going to use the noose and swastika incidents to their own devious, bureaucratic ends. Soon enough all students will be forced to memorize Maya Angelou poems and wear pink armbands.

No one will give a moment of thought to the notion that force-feeding claptrap about “embracing differences” may trigger some of these disgusting incidents. Nope: We’ll just get more pushy sessions rapping about “oppression,” more dismal lectures from dubious radicals, &c.