When Students Complain about Professors, Who Gets to Define the Controversy?
Jon Wiener
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2005

In this article, Wiener highlights the large quantity of attention the press has given accusations lodged against Columbia’s MEALAC professors, and focuses on the manner in which the news media has framed the situation at Columbia. Wiener argues that political forces outside of the university have played a defining role in the news media’s portrayal of the circumstances. Wiener draws a comparison between the way the news media treated the incident at Columbia and the way it dealt with a similar occurence at Harvard University in 1988. In 1988, three African American students brought allegations of racial insensitivity against Stephan Thernstrom, a conservative professor of American social history at Harvard. Wiener points out that news organizations rose to Professor Thernstrom’s defense, whereas in the case of Professor Massad, many of the same parties were harshly critical. Wiener explains this contradictory reaction as the result of differences in outside political pressure, citing the involvement of a well-funded, organized national media campaign by pro-Israel groups in criticism of Professor Massad, MEALAC and other Middle Eastern studies programs in the US. (back to academic freedom)