Audio/Video Blog

Dean John Coatsworth would welcome Hitler

September 23, 2007

Columbia Would Welcome Hitler, a Dean Insists

By Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
September 23, 2007 updated 10:56 am EDT

The next round of controversy at Columbia will involve remarks of a dean who says that Hitler would have been welcome on Morningside Heights if he would take questions from students.

The dean, John Coatsworth, heads the same institution that will serve as Columbia's host for President Ahmadinejad. The decision of Columbia to honor the Iranian anti-Semite and terror master with a speaking platform has drawn outrage among political leaders in the city, including the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn.

"If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States," Mr. Coatsworth said in an interview with Fox News that was linked last evening by the Drudge Report. "If he were willing to engage in debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him."

A former professor of history at Harvard, Mr. Coatsworth is dean of the university's School of International and Public Affairs, whose graduates, according to a statement Mr. Coatsworth issued last week, "serve as diplomats, intelligence analysts, security experts, business leaders, human rights activists," and leaders of non-governmental organizations.

Columbia acknowledged last week that the visit to the university of Mr. Ahmadinejad was initiated not by the university but by the Iranian envoy to the United Nations through a faculty member, Richard Bulliet. Mr. Bulliet is described in Wikipedia as having been criticized for, among other things, "his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as overly favoring the Palestinian cause" and also for offering "qualified support" for the revolution that brought the mullahs to power in Iran in 1979.

Who is Coatsworth? From Israpundit, May 31, 2007

Columbia appoints another anti-Israel Dean

by Jerry Gordon

When former Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Lisa Anderson resigned in a huff and returned to the faculty after the kerfuffle of her inviting Mad Mahdist Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on the eve of Rosh Ha Shanah last fall, you might have thought things might improve with appointment of her successor. Not the case. Instead, Professor John H. Coatsworth, currently Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center got the nod. Coatsworth is a noted scholar on Latin American economic and international history and past President of the American Historical Association.

Notwithstanding his Latin American expertise, Professor Coatsworth signed the anti-Israel Harvard divestment petition.

While at Chicago University in 1990, Professor Coatsworth weighed in on a Chicago public library controversy regarding a reading list put together by a virulently anti-Israel librarian, David Williams and contested by the ADL. Coatsworth, chairman of the University of Chicago history department at the time wrote the head of Chicago’s library commission: “For the general reader, Williams [the anti-Israel librarian at the center of the controversy] has put together an extremely useful and carefully balanced works on this important topic. As usual, Mr. Williams work conforms to the highest standards of professionalism. Criticisms by groups like [the ADL] with strongly partisan sympathies in respect to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should, in my judgment, be dismissed out of hand.”

Having attended patently anti-Israel events at Columbia’s SIPA, Professor Coatsworth will no doubt be welcomed with open arms by like minded faculty. People like Rashid Khalidi, Joseph Massad and the shame of sister institution Barnard College, Nadia Abu El-Haj.

Sic gloria transit my alma mater, Columbia.

Permalink 2 Comments

Comments

Alex

please don't compare Khalidi and Massad

It is when those on the pro-Israel right conflate respected academics who happen not to support Israel Khalidi with crackpots like Massad that they cause their own downfall.

Khalidi is a wonderful scholar. Perhaps you disagree with his views, but he has every right to them, as does a pro-Israel professor. Massad is a nut and a fraud and should lose his job. But when you join them together, it leads many to say, "Well these people are trying to sully Khalidi's good name, they must be executing an unfair witch hunt against Massad as well."

Please choose your battles and focus on what is worth fighting for.

September 25, 2007
Bruce Kodish

The Moral Inversion of John Coatsworth

A moral invert will first equalize good and evil and then give support to monsters in the name of liberality.

I cannot describe my disgust.

September 24, 2007