As I noted in a number of recent opinion pieces — first in a Letter to the Editor in the Spectator, then in a blog post on The Politicizer — I’ve expressed my support for Green Party candidate the Reverend Billy Talen, and railed against the idea that a vote for him is a wasted vote. In one op-ed this week, a Columbia student claimed that for the Reverend, the campaign was “the end, rather than the means to the end”. Another student seemed to imply that, if you don’t like like Bloomberg, obviously you should vote for Thompson. Of course, I take issue with both of these claims.

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…after the Pan-Arabist paper initiated a paranoiacally thorough boycott of Israel? I doubt that Al Ahram’s boycott will faze the pathologically anti-Israel Hamid Dabashi or Joseph Massad, who are occasional contributors to the racist newspaper’s English-language website. But it should. Consider:

“The boycott, approved by a majority of nine board members over six following a heated debate, includes a ban on meeting with and interviewing Israelis, and a ban on participation in events in which Israelis are taking part.

According to the report, the board of directors also banned Israelis from entering the Al-Ahram offices. The ban includes Israeli diplomats stationed in Egypt.”

I’m in no position to prove that this is unprecedented in the history of journalism, or that a publication this important (Al Ahram is the New York Times of one of the most important countries in the Arab world, basically) has never before broken off even casual contact with a specific ethnic group the way Al Ahram has. But it doesn’t particularly matter. If MEALAC adpoted Al Ahram’s policy, Dabashi and Massad would probably be out of a job–just read the bit in the Ha’aretz article about the Al Ahram editor who was disciplined for even meeting with Israel’s ambassador to Egypt.

If Massad and Dabashi care more about maintaining Egypt’s venomously anti-Jewish intellectual atmosphere than they do about standing up to the paper’s flagrant racism, they should keep writing for Al Ahram. But Dabashi and Massad are both established enough to be able to find some other publication that will carry their work. And as critical as I’ve been of the two of them in the past, I hope they’re morally centered enough to recognize the poisonous tendencies that their future publication in Al Ahram would contribute to.

I’d like to preface my first post with the disclaimer that I genuinely feel uncomfortable pulling out the race card. I think most Americans feel the same way. But this is one of those rare times I feel not only willing, but obligated to do so.

As I’m sure you know all too well, on September 9th, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) called President Obama a liar in the middle of his address to a joint session of Congress. His comment should be understood within the context of the “birther” movement (i.e. Obama was foreign-born) and a larger, more general trend of nearly unprecedented vitriol bursting forth from the Republican party. Joe Wilson issued an apology shortly thereafter, but has since refused to apologize again following a House vote expressing disapproval.

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This past summer, I worked for a free speech non-profit called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which focuses on protecting the rights of students at our nation’s universities. While there, I read some of the policies about which FIRE complained, including Columbia’s sexual harassment policy.

I decided to do some research on my own to see what this was all about, only to discover that Columbia’s sexual harassment policies are nearly impossible to decipher — and that Columbia has different versions of its sexual harassment policy floating around throughout its website!

I tried getting in touch with Columbia administrators to clarify their sexual harassment and sexual assault policies. Originally, and perhaps naively, I had expected this to be a relatively straightforward affair. Yet, I was to thoroughly disappointed.

I first contacted Helen Arnold, the Manager of the Disciplinary Procedure for Sexual Assault, with the following message:

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It took an artful bit of lying–in a language I can barely speak, no less–but I am now the single most registered World Leaders Forum attendee in the whole of Columbia University. Conspicuously bolting from a 6-person JTS Hebrew class is a gambit, I admit. But it paid off better than I could ever have anticipated, as I just didn’t see myself getting caught up in the sheer, oh I dunno, registrational thrill of it all: I was really only interested in seeing Kirchner, maybe Annan. But an almost seizure-inducing barrage of pop-up text-fields and six completely redundant new messages in my inbox attest to the seasonal mania of the World’s Leaders Forum. Six well-known to totally-obscure world leaders, six registrations. Really, it doesn’t get more registered than that. (more…)

“This one time…at band camp… I got pregnant!!” If there were ever a line to accurately summarize ABC’s hit family drama, Secret Life of the American Teenager, this would be it. The show, popular among teenagers and young adults, is in the midst of its second season this summer as it follows Amy Juergens, a 16 year-old high school teenager who has an unexpected teenage pregnancy because she sleeps with bad boy, Ricky Underwood, at summer band camp.

Sure, ABC Family likes the show because it broke the record for the highest- rated debut of any of their television shows. Yet, what shows does it compete with? Kyle XY, a show about an alien who lacks a belly button? (more…)