The president of Columbia University and university officials did not attend a weekend historians' conference in New York on the university's ties with Nazi Germany during the 1930s.

The Sunday evening conference, which was organized by the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, featured an American historian who has just completed a book about the American academic community's response to Nazism in the 1930s.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, who was invited to speak at the event, did not attend, nor did any member of the university's administration, said Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff.

The event, which was held in Manhattan's Center for Jewish History, attracted about 100 people, including Holocaust survivors and a former Columbia student who attended the university during that time.

University of Oklahoma professor Stephen H. Norwood recounted how then-Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler had welcomed Nazi Germany's ambassador, Hans Luther, to the campus in December 1933 and tried to forge friendly relations with Nazi-controlled German universities in the mid-'30s...