Responding to a recent attack on the president of Columbia University last week by 100 or so faculty members who accused Lee Bollinger of permitting outside interests to influence the school’s tenure decisions and of identifying the university with the Bush administration’s foreign policy in Iraq, another group of professors is circulating a letter in his defense. (Text of the Letter)
It is particularly in order that these dissenting faculty members defend the right of outside parties, such as alumni, to comment on pending tenure cases:
“When nonacademics and outsiders encounter or hear about what they consider inappropriate forms of teaching, allegations of intimidation or harassment, or the distortion of basic historical or scientific fact, they are justified in expressing, and entitled by the First Amendment to express, their objections.” (The New York Sun) (tip: Campus Watch)