A renowned black professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College received a chilling greeting when she arrived at work yesterday – a hangman’s noose pinned to her office door.
Sources said the sickening act targeting award-winning author and psychologist Madonna Constantine, 44, may stem from a bitter academic dispute with a white rival professor.
“They’re investigating whether another professor put the noose there rather than a student,” one source said. “They have someone they’re looking at, another professor who had a rivalry with her and was jealous over the work she did.”
University spokesman Joe Levine said, “The police are investigating it as a hate crime.
Constantine “has been at TC for a while,” he said. “I can only imagine [her] reactions are not pleasant ones.”
The prominent professor discovered the noose outside her fourth-floor office at around 9:40 a.m., authorities said. There are no cameras inside the building at 520 W. 120th St.
The news prompted a flurry of e-mails between students in a thread titled “Jena at Columbia,” referring to last year’s hanging of nooses under a tree in Jena, La., that six black kids had been sitting under the day before.
“We were talking about the Jena incident in the classroom. I said, ‘Well, we don’t have to go to Louisiana,’ ” said Professor Arlene Ackerman, a black female teacher at the college.
“Frankly, I was shocked and stunned and had to sit back in my chair,” Ackerman said of the Columbia incident. “I’m trying to figure out why somebody thought this was OK.”
Ackerman praised the college for condemning “the hateful act” and calling a meeting for this morning to discuss it.
Students were also stunned.
“What is this, the Middle Ages? And, of all places, here,” said graduate psychology major Linn Lyens.
“We always say, ‘Oh, that’s because they [racists] aren’t educated.’ And here we are, at one of the grandest institutions there is. It just leaves you scratching your head.”
Another student tied the incident to the university’s infamous invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the school last month.
“This is same Columbia that let a murder[er] and racist [speak] in a public forum and the crowd cheered him. It begs the question: Is Columbia not encouraging this type of behavior?” the student wrote on the Web.
Constantine could not be reached for comment. She taught at Ohio State University before Columbia.
According to the only entry about her on the Web site “Rate My Professors, “Dr. Constantine is fun and informative . . . a bit biased and something of a feminazi, but not to any offensive extent.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Tom Liddy and Philip Messing