'I Will Not Make Any Contributions to Columbia'

So the folks at Columbia who granted tenure to the Jew-hating creep Joseph Massad thought they were being clever with their sneaky actions.

Well, when donations to the school dry up we'll see how they feel.

Furious faculty at Columbia University claim administrators skirted rules by granting tenure to a controversial Arab-studies professor -- and angry alumni are threatening to withhold donations.

Joseph Massad -- a professor of modern Arab politics who has called Israel a "racist Jewish state," reportedly intimidated Jewish students, and even asked one Israeli student attending an off-campus lecture how many Palestinians he had murdered as a soldier -- got the lifelong teaching gig last month.

Massad's first bid for tenure was denied in the fall of 2007, and the 45-year-old Palestinian-Arab prof has not published any major scholarly work in the past two years, according to critics and Massad's Web page on the Columbia Internet site.

Columbia states a professor can be reconsidered for tenure only in the case of "substantial scholarly growth following the original negative decision," according to the university's faculty handbook.

"I will not make any contributions to Columbia," said Herbert London, class of 1960, who is president of the Hudson Institute. "I used to give money to the school's athletic program, but I no longer have any desire to do so. This is the end of the line."

Geoffrey Thompson, class of 1963, said, "Members of my class are very upset. Some are material contributors, and will want restrictions for any new gift in the future. Joseph Massad is a flash point, a violent one."

Steve Case, who serves on the university's board of trustees, defended the university's decision.

Naturally, a Columbia spokesthing responds with snide smugness.

"I regret that Columbia alumni disapprove of this decision, and I hope they find a way to overcome it," he said.

It's as if they have some problem they need to overcome rather than the other way around.

Shameless Israel Basher Gets Tenured at Columbia

It should come as no surprise that a school that so openly welcomed the madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a couple of years ago would tenure, undeservedly, to an open hater of Israel.

Compounding the insult, the folks at the esteemed Ivy League university went about their duplicity in hush-hush fashion, lest anyone know they're just fine with an anti-Semitic, anti-gay creep being tenured.

Just disgraceful.

JOSEPH Massad's scholarly contribution during his decade as a faculty member of Columbia University's Middle East Studies Department may be summed up as follows: Israel is racist, and homosexuality is an insidious Western invention.

Yet that was enough for Columbia, which officially -- if quietly -- awarded Massad tenure earlier this month.

Columbia's process for reviewing tenure candidates is as rigorous as any Ivy League school's. Ordinarily, an academic of Massad's caliber would be bounced from Morningside Heights. And in fact, the system did work -- it denied Massad tenure two years ago.

But now the school's academic standards have succumbed to ideological tensions and campus politics -- in what appears to be a remarkable manipulation of the tenure process and a breach of fiduciary trust.

Read on for an eye-opening look at Massad.

If fecklessness were an academic pursuit, Columbia President Lee Bollinger would be at the head of the class.

Previously.

Columbia Gives Tenure to Anti-Semitic Cretin

Every now and then Columbia University does the right thing, as in the case of dismissing the dubious plagiarist Madonna Constantine, although we still have never had any resolution to the very suspect noose hanging incident. Still, more often than not they suspend reality and take the low road, most recently giving tenure to a virulent Jew-hating professor.

Just when it looked like Columbia University might actually be striking an uncharacteristic blow for academic honesty comes word that the institution has caved in to pressure and awarded tenure to one of its most unsavory faculty members.

The reportedly lucky recipient is Joseph Massad, associate professor at Columbia's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture -- who has long been notorious for his obnoxious pronouncements on Israel (and Jews generally), as well as his bullying of students who dare to disagree with him.

Word of Massad's tenure comes from As'ad AbuKhalil, a California professor who blogs under the name "angryarab" and reports -- in a "message to all the Zionist hoodlums out there"-- that Massad "called me from Cairo to break the great news."

Columbia refuses to confirm the "great news," saying it does not comment on tenure issues as a matter of policy. But, if true, it represents a shameful about-face and craven surrender to pressure.

Last fall, Columbia Provost Alan Brinkley reportedly moved to deny Massad tenure. This after an academic panel found that Massad violated academic standards by failing "to show respect for the rights of others to hold opinions differing from his own."

(The opinions with which some students chose to differ, by the way, include frequent vitriolic comparisons of Israeli leaders to Nazis and diatribes alleging undue Jewish influence on US policy.)

That led some faculty members to demand an unusual second hearing, saying that tenure decisions should be based on a candidate's "scholarship, teaching and service, not his political views."

But what if, as with Massad, his teaching and his politics are inseparable?

As disquieting as Massad's politics is his demeanor. He's repeatedly been accused of harassing students who disagree with him.

Indeed, here's a criticism of Massad from Campus Watch.

Joseph Massad of the Middle Eastern department. According to reliable source, Prof. Massad has openly supported Islamist terrorism against Israel, including suicide bombings of civilians. In his class on Israeli-Palestinian politics, Massad openly engages in conspiracy theories, teaching students about the connections between Nazis, Rothchilds, international bankers, and a host of other nefarious characters (such as the Freemasons or the Knights Templars) to dispossess Palestinians of their land and make them permanent victims of Western colonialism and imperialism. From what I hear, his behavior behooves that of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and not that of a published academic. Massad has also come close to belittling, if not denying the Holocaust outright.

Here's what his friend the Angry Arab had to say.

I have a message to all the Zionist hoodlums out there: for all of you who campaigned and harassed and intimidated and who treated academic life like an aspect of Zionist thuggery, Joseph Massad has received tenure. He called me yesterday from Cairo to break the great news to me and I could not wait to report it to his enemies and mine. It is with great pleasure and gratification that I break the news to all of you. No matter what dirty tricks you (i.e. Zionist hoodlums) have resorted to, and no matter what sleazy methods you have employed and no matter what sinister propaganda you have resorted to, dear Joseph Massad deservedly received his tenure.

Columbia must be so proud.