Opinion

Columbia’s dishonor

J.C. Rice

They teach many things at Columbia University — but common decency appears not to be among them.

Nor how to recognize personal honor.

Consider the treatment given last week to Anthony Maschek, a Purple Heart combat vet of the Iraq war, when he spoke up in support of a return of reserve officer training to Columbia after a 40-plus-year absence.

It was, in a word, disgraceful.

Maschek, a former US Army staff sergeant, was hospitalized for two years as he recuperated from 11 gunshot wounds received in a firefight near Kirkuk.

As The Post’s Annie Karni reported Sunday, he’s now a freshman economics major at the Ivy League school.

Not surprising, he supports a return of ROTC to Columbia — the program having been banished during the anti-Vietnam War student tantrums of the ’60s.

So thus did Maschek stand — no easy thing for him — before hundreds of fellow students to make a simple point: The world is a dangerous place, and the absence of a strong American military would make it more dangerous yet for Americans everywhere.

“It doesn’t matter how you feel about the war. It doesn’t matter how you feel about fighting,” said Maschek. “There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.”

An unremarkable assertion, all in all.

The response?

Laughter.

Catcalls.

And the usual sophistries about gay rights, economic justice, America’s hobnailed boots, whatever — the same bushwa dragged out by the academy whenever it feels the need to deflect attention from the obvious, which is that it hates the military and has for more than a generation.

The privileged young men and women mouthing the epithets last Tuesday didn’t invent any of this, though in their self-righteousness they doubtless feel otherwise.

And who’s to doubt that they would benefit from being marched around the Afghan outback long enough to learn what fundamentally better young men and women do on their behalf all around the world, every day, as a matter or routine?

But that would still leave the academy, which institutionally began to sour on the military back when so many of its then-rising young stars were exploiting student deferments to dodge service in Vietnam.

Their arguments were not dissimilar to what Maschek heard last week — they weren’t behaving badly, America was — but deep in their souls many understood that better young men than they were dying in their stead half a world away, and that the only way personal peace could be found was in demonizing the military.

That’s not all that was going on, of course. The academy’s affection for Marxism, a doctrine in fundamental conflict with America’s founding principles, is invincible.

And the military, viewed as an instrument of American policy, is reviled for that as well.

Ironically, Columbia is attempting to do the right thing by returning vets.

Hundreds are enrolled there these days, and those with strong enough stomachs to bear the snide antipathies they encounter daily are prospering — particularly in the university’s graduate schools.

But this doesn’t relieve university President Lee Bollinger of his own debt of honor regarding former Staff Sgt. Anthony Maschek.

The young man’s sacrifices on behalf of the United States of America are undeniable, and his treatment at the hands of his fellow students was shameful.

For the moment, that shame resides solely with the students.

But if Bollinger lets the matter stand unresolved — without a measure of disapprobation for the students and without a public apology to Maschek — then very soon the shame becomes Columbia’s.

And Bollinger’s.

mcmanus@nypost.com