Daily Blague

Although I wouldn't want to touch the point of contention among pro- and allegedly anti-Israel factions at Columbia with yard-long tongs, I'm glad that university president Lee Bollinger has spoken up.

"We should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty members above every other value," the president, Lee C. Bollinger, said in a speech to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

What this means, I hope, is that the freedom that professors have to explore the consequences of all conceivable ideas does not entail a license to vent personal hostility while on the job. This would include publication of the kind of intemperate remarks that have landed Ward Churchill on the hot seat. University professors ought to spend more time guiding society and less time antagonizing it.

At the same time, the American public's refusal to take an interest in the Middle East means that the debate is confined to campuses and special interests. I don't mean that we ought to have opinions about every global problem. That would be nice, but perhaps overexcited. A region to which we have committed considerable amounts of money and military force, however, would seem to merit broad public attention.