A panel of Madonna Constantine’s erstwhile colleagues at Columbia has upheld the university’s decision to fire her for serial plagiarism. This ought not to be so remarkable — stealing other people’s scholarly work should be a cut-and-dried offense in academe — but Columbia has bowed to villains so egregiously in the past that this verdict is making the news.

Recall that in recent times, the university long procrastinated before taking unpublicized actions against students who attacked an anti-illegal-immigration speaker in a public forum. The school also graced the infamous president of Iran with a prestigious speaking engagement and granted tenure to Joseph Massad, a Middle Eastern-studies professor with a virulent bias against Israel and a record of bullying students who do not share his prejudice.

Thus, it has become newsworthy when Columbia does the right thing. The caustic use of italics in the following excerpts from a New York Post editorial on the Constantine affair underscores this perception:

Embattled educator Madonna Constantine has a one-of-a-kind distinction: She’s the professor that not even Columbia could stomach.

And:

If Columbia University wasn’t cowed into backing down, you have to figure the charges against Constantine are pretty solid.