1. The course is a twelve week program with a different lecturer each week. According to the Forward:

“On February 3, in the first lecture of the teacher-training course, Khalidi provided an overview of the geography and demography of the region. According to the teacher who organized the course and was present at the lecture, Khalidi’s talk did not touch on any sensitive material.”

2. The second point is summed up in the article by a quote from Susan Brown, a spokeswoman for Columbia, who says:

“The fact that a respected professor and scholar would be summarily judged and dismissed, without consultation or discussion with him, or with us, is an issue of great concern.”

In other words, they didn’t even let him or the university defend themselves. They just got rid of him.

As for the broader point of balance among professors. It’s true that it seems a waste of time to balance anti-Israeli academics with pro-Israeli academics. But it’s equally silly to suggest that academics should be impartial. The root of the argument at Columbia is that some anti-Israeli academics were harassing Jewish/Israeli students in lectures and not allowing them to argue their point. That should be addressed. But as the Forward notes

Although Khalidi has not been accused of any wrongdoing by the students, he has occupied a central position in press reports on the conflict.

It also notes that:

During the turmoil at Columbia, Khalidi has been held up as a model teacher by some of the pro-Israel students who have complained about other Middle Eastern studies professors. In a guide to university courses compiled by Columbia students, known as Culpa, Khalidi’s teaching received a silver nugget, the second-highest award after the gold nugget, and one reviewer said, “Not one divisive issue was polemicized.”

The question you have to ask is why has the city barred him from the course if some pro-Israeli students say he is a model professor, if the class he was teaching did not touch on the subject, and if his teaching was highly regarded among Columbia students in general?

The parallels to Columbia are interesting but limited. Shocked as I am to admit it, the NYSun editorial seems to have a reasonable point - does free speech require having every point of view represented all the time, even those that are just wrong? Should a university be vulnerable to charges of academic bias because it doesn’t have a member of the flat earth society on its faculty. I’m honestly not sure where the line is drawn, but it seems that to me that just because SOAS may be right in forcing the Union to allow a pro-Israel speaker on campus, it does not mean the Dept. of Education is necessarily wrong in booting a radical critic of Israel from a course meant to help others teach the Arab Israeli conflict.

Strong words from Alisa Solomon in The Forward about the Columbia/Khalidi/schools chancellor row. Khalidi has spoken of discriminatory laws within Israel that favor […]