BRATTLEBORO-As an alumnus of Columbia College who participated in the historic 1968 student strike against the university's complicity in the Vietnam war, I'm both deeply troubled and ashamed of my alma mater's abject capitulation to the Trump administration's outrageous demands for direct control of some of its more controversial academic departments and programs, including any involved in Palestinian studies.
This bending of the knee was done, of course, for one simple reason: money - namely, the $400 million the government was threatening to withhold.
What I have yet to hear or read in the liberal media I access (though I could have missed it) is any discussion of the fact that: given Columbia's enormous endowment of $14.8 billion - i.e., nearly $15,000 million - the Board of Trustees had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make an historic stand against tyrannical state power and for academic freedom and integrity.
Sadly - indeed, tragically - to their everlasting shame, they ducked, caved, and opted for the coward's way out.
To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, they could have saved it, but they were too damn cheap and lazy.
Richard Evers
Brattleboro
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