The Mideast Comes to Columbia (University)

The Mideast Comes to Columbia

by SCOTT SHERMAN

[from the April 4, 2005 issue]

In December 2003 Rabbi Charles Sheer, the director of the Columbia/Barnard chapter of Hillel, the Jewish campus organization, dispatched an e-bulletin to alumni, students and supporters. There was much to report: In 2002 a movement of students and professors had urged Columbia to divest from companies that manufactured and sold weaponry to Israel. In the end, Rabbi Sheer had vanquished the prodivestment forces with a well-executed campaign that garnered 33,000 signatures. "There have not been any major divestment campaigns on any US campus, and almost no anti-Israel student-initiated activity--speakers, films or demonstrations--on our campus," Sheer noted with pride. "That's the good news." The bad news? "The battleground regarding the Middle East at Columbia University has shifted to the classroom." Rabbi Sheer was mainly referring to classrooms in a single department--Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC)--and he hinted that a counterstrike against MEALAC was in the making: "A student group," he wrote, "is currently working on a video that records how intimidated students feel by advocacy teaching....