Timothy Mitchell, a professor who signed a 2004 letter supporting the academic boycott of Israel, has been hired to teach in Columbia’s infamously biased Middle Eastern studies department. Recall, as the New York Sun recounts, that the department:
found itself at the center of the storm four years ago when pro-Israel students accused some Middle Eastern studies professors of intimidating them in the classroom. The controversy led Columbia officials to temporarily place the department into a receivership.
To his credit, Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, strongly opposed a renewed boycott effort against Israeli academics in 2007, denouncing it as “intellectually shoddy” and a “biased” attempt “to hijack the central mission of higher education.”
When it comes to faculty hiring, however, Bollinge’s protestations apparently don’t count for much.