LAST JEW OUT OF COLUMBIA UNIV. TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

SOFT ON ANTI-SEMITISM BY RYAN SAGER
COLUMBIA University is about to host yet another apparent anti-Semite. But President Lee Bollinger is still bent on saving his school's image — rather than grappling with its real problems.

On Feb. 10, Columbia's Heyman Center for the Humanities will host a talk by Tom Paulin, an Irish poet infamous for telling an Arab paper that Brooklyn-born Israeli settlers "should be shot dead . . . they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them." Paulin also says that Israel has no right to exist and that he resigned from Britain's Labor Party because it was "Zionist."

In its defense, Columbia notes that Paulin will only be part of a panel discussing 18th century statesman Edmund Burke. "This has nothing to do with contemporary politics," says Columbia spokeswoman Katherine Moore. "We don't condone anti-Semitic behavior or expression of any kind."

Ariel Beery, an undergrad who's been a leader on this issue, sees it differently, saying: "Columbia would never invite a speaker who called for the killing of African-Americans or homosexuals." All this follows a deluge of evidence of intolerance in Columbia's Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures.

But Bollinger doesn't seem to be up to the task of turning back the tide of hate. The problem had gotten bad enough last year that he was obliged to set up a panel to look into the possibility of bias and intimidation in Columbia's classrooms. It came up with zilch.

Which became an embarrassment in November, when the student documentary "Columbia Unbecoming" was screened on campus. The film details abusive behavior by professors toward Jewish students — charges aired initially in The New York Sun.