COLUMBIA UNIV.'S TROUBLES ONLY GET WORSE

COLUMBIA PROFS FOR TRUTH By RYAN SAGER
COLUMBIA University Presi dent Lee Bollinger has an other headache on his hands, The Post has learned. A group of professors on campus is releasing a report today that is highly critical of the university's handling of charges of anti-Semitism and classroom intimidation — and especially of the committee that Bollinger set up to investigate. What's more, students who have observed the committee's proceedings are raising their own troubling questions about the direction the inquiry has taken.

"I don't understand why a committee investigating such a sensitive issue would be recruited among people with such blatant conflicts of interest," says Judith Jacobson, an assistant professor of public health and founder of the Columbia chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the group issuing the report. As the group's report details, out of five members on Bollinger's committee: two signed an anti-Israel divestment petition, one was the thesis adviser for Joseph Massad (a professor prominently accused of wrongdoing), one has written that Israel is responsible for global anti-Semitism and one is a university administrator who ignored student complaints for months. The man who handpicked the committee, Nick Dirks, is married to a professor who co-teaches a class with Massad.