Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Martin Kramer takes note of a young Israeli violinist's short stint in Middle East studies at Columbia University:
Haaretz: Was that the only case?
Malkin-Almani: There were cases like that all the time. In one class I asked the lecturer where the border between East and West Jerusalem ran. He started to shout that you Israelis are so stupid, you don't know anything. All the students in the class joined him and started shouting at me. That was the routine. Once I met with Said, who was a good friend of Daniel Barenboim, and I told him I wanted to join the Arab-Jewish orchestra they had established. He asked me where I was born and I told him Israel. Straight off he told me that Israel had not permitted the entry of a few musicians from Syria who wanted to play with the orchestra in Bethlehem. Suddenly he started to shout at me as though I were the one who stamps the permits. After two years of studies I said enough is enough and I left the university.
Haaretz: Did you share your experiences with anyone on the faculty?
Malkin-Almani: I had an Israeli lecturer whom I told what happened in the classes and I gave her all the articles we were given. She said that we must not meet in the university. A month later she told me, "We checked it out, it is dangerous to act and the best thing is to be silent."
Kramer:
Saint Edward
To understand how far left of reality Columbia is, all you have to do is look at the bookstores.
There is an official campus bookstore, but it is run by - gasp - a large chain (Barnes and Noble.) Using chain stores is politically incorrect. The faculty, especially the humanities and social science faculty - therefore shun the college bookstore and give their reading lists to an independent store called Labyrinth.
The idea of independent bookstores is unexceptionable. This particular store, however, is considerably to the left of Che Guevara.
To enter Labyrinth is to enter a world in which communism is the great hope of the future, almost every problem in the world is the result of European imprerialism, and gender theory is applied to everything from architecture to what to eat for lunch.
The memory of Edward Said dominates this sanctum of post-rationalism, a sanctum in which Columbia undergraduates are effectively forced - albeit nor formally required - to purchase their course books. (The professors give their lists to this store, and the liklihood of other stores having all the required books in stock is very low.)
To remind the students of the correct group-think, the store is dominated by a handsome portrait of Saint Edward hanging just behind the checkout-counter.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1136361054177&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull