Columbia Changes

"'I'm glad to be here with you at this out fiftieth class reunion. In fact (and sorry to remind you of this) we've all reached that point in life where we can appreciate George Burns' crack that at his age he was glad to be anywhere. ... But the most profound impression [Bernard Wishy] left was his classroom demeanor, which exemplified Columbia's official mission, defined in those days as 'the disinterested pursuit of knowledge.' Professor Wishy was not a proselytizer. We never knew when he might be playing devil's advocate, and taking positions he didn't himself hold in order to shake us from our reflexive assumptions. ... By contrast, the ancients believed that the world cannot be fundamentally changed, at least not by human beings. ... Fifty years ago, my radical views caused me to feel like an outsider at Columbia. Returning as a conservative, I find myself an outsider still--and again it is because of my political views. ... And this attitude of exclusion is a prevailing one among current Columbia faculty. So far as I can ascertain, there is not a single prominent conservative intellectual on Columbia's liberal arts faculty. ... The fact that this ideology is a required creed for students of Women's studies reflects not an advance in consciousness but the retrogressive return of American liberal arts colleges to their 19th Century roles are doctrinal institutions. ... The hard sciences--the engines of our technological futures--continue to progress. If one were to walk over to the departments of biology and neuroscience, one would learn that gender differences are not 'socially constructed' but hard-wired as part of our genetic makeup. ... At the same time that anti-black prejudice has retreated from the public square, other forms of prejudice using other groups as targets have become acceptable, even normal, and particularly in the most 'progressive' circles. ... The result is that if you are an impoverished and discriminated against Asian student, universities will deny you financial aid available to wealthy African Americans and you will have to score much higher on your graduate achievement tests just to be able to apply to medical and law schools. ... Taking a personal view of these developments, I note that when we entered Columbia in 1955 we understood that there was a quota system for Jewish applicants. It was masked as a geographical diversity program, just as deceptive as the one I've just described, and rationalized as an attempt to create a student body drawn from all parts of the country. Its architects had figured out that the pool of Jews in states such as Arkansas and Nebraska was likely to be small. ... Today, even though there are many Jews on the Columbia faculty and Jews even sit on the board of trustees, there are also overt and unapologetic anti-Semites lecturing in Columbia classrooms, which would have been unheard of in our day", original italics, my emphasis, David Horowitz, 9 June 2009, at: http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=35156.

Legal system abuse tag? Yes. We learn in studying cases, only the result counts. Let's return to 1955. How can Columbia discriminate against Jewish applicants? Don't say, "We have quotas". Study the facts. 36% of America's then 5.5 milion Jews lived in New York City's (NYC) five boroughs. Easy, create geographic admission zones, with NYC as one zone. Problem solved. More on how the law really works later.