In the wake of intense criticism of anti-Israel bias in Columbia's Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), and wide publicity from the David Project's film "Columbia Unbecoming" and the resulting conference, Columbia President Bollinger asked Columbia�s provost to convene a panel, but its composition did not reassure anyone hoping for a neutral investigation of the facts. NY Rep. Anthony Wiener called on the panel to be disbanded because of its lack of impartiality. Alan Dershowitz called for an outside investigation.

Here is the final report. Powerline delves into the controversy surrounding its release. Just when I think the Times can't sink lower than its most recent example of shoddy journalism, the now senile "Gray Lady" outdoes itself by colluding with the university to report only one side of the controversy. The Columbia Spectator also got the report the evening before its formal release, but its story does include a short rebuttal from the students involved. CampusJ - reporting from Columbia U - airs the students' complaints fully.

Charles Jacobs of the Anti-Slavery Group and the David Project condemns the report:

The report obfuscates by referring to incidents of biased, dishonest teaching in pedagogical and psychological terms. It classes them as �rhetorically combative� methods or as expressions of �uncongenial views� that � and the issue is reduced to this � make some students �uncomfortable.� But the committee never considers the possibility that these �teachings� are lies and propaganda. When Professor Massad teaches that the word �Zion� means �penis� and therefore Zionism is a macho movement, this is not an uncongenial view, but a lie. When at Columbia it is taught that the Jews are Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews, and that the Jews slaughtered Arabs in Jenin, these are not �rhetorically combative� modes of teaching; they are blood libels, anti-Semitic provocations, deceptions, and Arabist propaganda.

This is the crux of the matter, as it is with the controversy surrounding Ward Churchill. The conference title included the phrase "Academic Integrity" for a reason. Scholarship is only a meaningful concept if it is based on facts.

UPDATE: The Columbia Spectator tells how they negotiated terms with the university. So far it looks like they acted like ethical journalists and stood up to the university's attempt to manage the news, while the supposed flagship of American newspapers rolled over without a fight. More on behind-the-scenes conniving from one of the students.

UPDATE: The website for the film "Columbia Unbecoming." I didn't link to it before since access has been wifty. I don't know if it's the net in general today or lots of hits to the site.

UPDATE: Columbians for Academic Freedom (the student group which raised the bias issue) held a press conference this afternoon to express their dissatisfaction with the panel's performance.

UPDATE: On the topic of the relationship of scholarship to facts, the director of Campus Watch points out that Columbia University confronted this issue 37 years ago:

. . . the Cox Commission Report, was particularly hard on the administration's handling of the situation that led to the student takeover of several campus buildings and to their subsequent expulsion by the police. But the report was also strongly critical of students and of their disruptive and violent tactics.

Overall, it is a subtle and frank analysis. The formula "academic security, intellectual weapons, and political action" is a marvel of conciseness, and the phrase resonates strongly across the 37 years since it was first published. Put aside the antiquated "man of action" rhetoric, and we have an apt description of the situation today: an academic enterprise that decisively favors values over facts.

More about of one of the professors exonerated by the Columbia report.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Columbia is currently hosting a visiting "scholar" who used her academic credentials to bash Israel, predictably got her facts wrong, and was subjected to an elegant fisking.