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Trusting trustees
Last week, Columbia University concluded its now-notorious investigation into allegations that anti-Semitism runs rampant--or at least unchecked and unchallenged--in its department of Middle East studies. Some observers found the results of the report, which found no evidence of rampant anti-Semitism and which only flagged as inappropriate one incident with one professor, to be credible and honorably determined; others suggested the investigation was not all it should be, noting that certain members of the investigative committee were known for their anti-Israel activism, and that some of the more disturbing allegations were dismissed. One particularly noteworthy question was asked by the New York Sun in a staff editorial:
... many are starting to ask privately, "Where are the trustees?" They are a distinguished group. Jose Cabranes is one of our nation's greatest judges. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate who runs Memorial Sloan-Kettering, is one of our greatest scientists. Esta Stecher is involved with the Jewish community through service on the New York regional board of the Anti-Defamation League and on the board of the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty. Evan Davis is a masterful lawyer who, in retrospect, might have been a better New York attorney general than Eliot Spitzer. We name but a few.Yet with the exception of Mr. Bollinger and the chairman, David Stern, not one of the 22 trustees has deigned to utter a peep of public comment to clarify where they stand in respect of what is happening at their university. We invite our readers to study the list above. Has the cat got all their tongues?
It's an interesting question, no matter where you stand on the issue. The Sun openly suggests that the investigation was a whitewash, and insinuates that the trustees' silence marks a complicity with a coverup of monumental proportions. But it isn't necessary to tie the trustees' silence to guilt in order to see a problem with that silence--at a moment when the reputation of the university is on the line, where there has been an unprecedented investigation into whether the university has been engaging in systematic discrimination against Jews, and where there is considerable question, even after the release of the report, as to whether the allegations have been honestly assessed, the voice of the trustees ought to be heard. They are, after all, the university's ethical bottom line; it is ultimately their obligation and prerogative to ensure that Columbia conducts itself with absolute integrity. If it is possible for them to defend Columbia's conduct, to promise the public that there has been no wrongdoing and that Columbia remains, as ever, absolutely committed to the ongoing work of guaranteeing free inquiry and tolerance for all, then why don't they do so? Because trustees are largely invisible, their importance to the universities and colleges they oversee tends to be forgotten; indeed, their existence tends to be forgotten. But they shouldn't be. They are accountable, and if they do not acknowledge that voluntarily, the public must remind them.
Posted by acta online on April 04, 2005 at April 4, 2005 04:55 PM