Columbia University has gone and done it again.
Still under fire for a host of outrages – offering a platform to Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; tolerating faculty members’ harassment of pro-Israeli students and a blatant physical attack on a guest speaker; all but ignoring egregious plagiarism on the part of a tenured professor – the school has made a most unfortunate appointment to a key academic post.
John Coatsworth, who actually reached out and invited Ahmadinejad to the Ivy League campus last fall, has been named dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs by President Lee Bollinger.
Bad choice.
And not just because of Coatsworth’s far-left ideology, which certainly won’t be out of character on the Morningside Heights campus.
Nor because of his active support for the “divest from Israel” movement – a campaign Bollinger himself has quite correctly labeled “grotesque.”
And not even because of his unseemly apologia for Fidel Castro. As the New York Sun has noted, Coatsworth has hailed the “honorable” Cuban communists who “work . . . to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.” And, he sniffed, Cuba “does not practice genocide or start world wars” – whatever that means.
No, the real problem with Coatsworth is rooted in the Ahmadinejad affair – and was hinted at in his bizarre statement that he “certainly” would have invited Adolf Hitler to Columbia “if he were willing to debate in a debate and a discussion.”
He – like Lee Bollinger – simply failed to comprehend the fundamental irony of offering the aegis of academic freedom to someone who refuses the same right to his own citizens.
As Barry Rosen (who spent 444 days as a hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981) wrote in these pages at the time: “It’s only when Ahmadinejad permits his own people to march and speak freely that I believe [Columbia] would be justified in giving the Iranian president an open forum.”
Columbia, which spent millions to win approval of its plan to dramatically expand its uptown campus, has not covered itself with any glory by elevating Coatsworth to this key position.
What a disgrace.