NYPost

CUNY VOWS CRACKDOWN ON ANTI-U.S. HATEFEST

By ANDREA PEYSER

October 4, 2001 -- CITY College's orgy of hate will not be ignored.

City University trustees are horrified by a forum in which professors blamed America for the attack on the World Trade Center - and they're drafting a resolution condemning faculty hate speech.

"These people should be ashamed of themselves," CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld told me yesterday.

"While recognizing [the professors'] right to be stupid, their opinions render ill repute to the university.

"They're fortunate it's not up to me," he added. "I would consider that behavior seditious at this time."

As you read here yesterday, City College's radical professors union - the Professional Staff Congress Forum - sponsored an event on Tuesday titled "Threats of War, Challenges to Peace."

It was a two-hour, hard-core America-bashing festival.

The terrorist attack on the trade center was referred to by faculty as "the incident." Terrorists were described as freedom fighters.

One anthropology professor, M.A. Samad-Matias, framed the atrocity as an understandable Islamic response to Western imperialism.

Wiesenfeld said he will introduce a resolution condemning the event at a meeting of CUNY trustees this month.

"We would expect the board will vote unanimously in favor" of the resolution, said trustee John Calandra.

Such resolutions - the last one condemned the anti-Semitic ravings of Prof. Leonard Jeffries - allow trustees to send a message to taxpayers who pay the ranting professors' salaries.

"It informs the world that these beliefs are not shared by any of the college's leadership," said Calandra.

"There is no valid reason, no rationalization for terrorism," he said.

CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein apparently agrees.

Speaking before members of the Center for Educational Innovation yesterday, Goldstein said:

"Let there be no doubt whatsoever: I have no sympathy for the voices of those who make lame excuses for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon based on ideological or historical circumstances.

"Those who do so should take pause to remember the children left without parents, the wives and the husbands who lost their dear ones in these heinous and reprehensible acts."

One student who attended the hatefest called me yesterday to say he felt intimidated by his own professors.

"It was disgusting," he said. "It was horrible. I was so upset."

Fearing retribution, the student asked me not to identify him.

"My grade depends on a lot of the professors who spoke," he explained. "If you voice an opinion of dissent, professors look down on you."

So much for academic diversity.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2001