SCHOLARS AT WORK – AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  There are many fine people at Columbia University in New York, but there are some who aren't so fine.  This story will enrage you, but it is typical of what goes on at some of our houses of learning.  From the New York Post:

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

The cry of "racist" is the standard left-wing merchandise.  No matter who you are, or what you stand for, you're a racist if they don't like you. 

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Imagine laughing at a man who was in a wheelchair from wounds suffered in the service of his country.  I wonder how many Columbia "scholars" will express outrage.  I'm not holding my breath.

The party line in the Ivy League, of which Columbia is a part, is that ROTC has been kept out because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays.  Now that the policy has been reversed, we had a moral right to expect that ROTC would be welcomed back.  Not in your life.  The left will simply come up with more excuses, wallowing in its traditional deception and dishonesty.

As I said, there are also fine people at Columbia:

A group of 34 faculty colleagues, including historian Kenneth Jackson and former Bloomberg adviser Esther Fuchs, plan to announce their support of ROTC tomorrow.

Two very solid, traditional faculty members.  Jackson is a military historian.

We hope this New York Post story will result in some Columbia alumni heating up the lines to the office of President Lee Bollinger, and demanding that he apologize, on behalf of the university, for the treatment of war hero Maschek.

Columbia was, during World War II, a great center for the training of naval officers.  Read "The Caine Mutiny," by Columbia graduate Herman Wouk.

February 20, 2011