By William S. Lind

Two weeks ago, Columbia University earned the 1998 Pontius Pilate Award for Moral Cowardice. Columbia had rented space to Accuracy in Academia, a conservative student organization, for a conference titled "A Place at the Table: Conservative Ideas in Higher Education." The topic was clearly an appropriate one for an academic institution.

On the first day of the conference, a Friday, about 250 Politically Correct demonstrators showed up to protest the "classist, racist and offensive ideas" being discussed at the conference. The protestors had a right to protest, as those holding the conference had a right to express their views. Once might have hoped that Columbia would have responded to the statement by a demonstrator that "it's not possible to discuss rationally matter of life, death, equality and hatred." Of course it is possible to discuss those matters rationally, and a university exists in part to do so. But not Columbia, it seems.

For Columbia's response to the demonstration was to cancel the conference.

To its credit, Accuracy in Academia did show moral courage. It simply moved its conference across the street to a park -- back to the groves of academe.

Columbia should not be allowed to get off so easily. Not only did it have a contract with Accuracy in Academia to provide (indoor) space on campus, as a university, it has a contract with society as well. In return for the honor, prestige, and substantial amounts of money America provides Columbia University, Columbia has a moral responsibility to stand up for truth. In this case, the truth at stake is that there is more than one side to virtually every issue, and that universities are places where all sides should be heard, in an atmosphere of rational debate and discussion.

Instead Columbia showed itself as cowardly as many German universities in the 1930s, when they rushed to embrace the ideology that claimed to own the future. Then, that ideology was National Socialism; now, it is the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness (which found its first home on American shores in 1934, when Columbia University helped the Frankfurt School set up shop in New York City). If the ideology has changed, the judgement remains the same: universities that wallow in moral cowardice deserve to lose their reputations, their students and their funding.

Sadly, in revealing itself as a whorehouse that seeks nothing but to spread its legs for the petty tyrants of Political Correctness, Columbia shows itself to be the rule, not the exception, among present day American colleges. When are we going to have the moral courage to stop sending our kids, and our money, to places like this?

Contact: Bill Lind @ Free Congress Foundation (202) 546-3000