Ruminations on Academic Freedom, Professorial Rant, and the Sublime Virtue of Putting a Sock in It

by Elizabeth J. Carter Compare and contrast the following scenes from the Chicago Tribune and CNN.com: March 26, 2003, in the rotunda of Low Library at Columbia University: professors have gathered at an anti-war teach-in to protest U.S. military involvement in Iraq. At some point during the 6-hour event, full-time assistant professor of anthropology, Nicholas DeGenova, reportedly tells those present that the American flag symbolizes imperialism, and that he would like to see “a million more Mogadishus”—a reference to the 1993 deaths of more than a dozen U.S. soldiers during a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Columbia’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, […]