Columbia again!?
April 20, 2005 13:32 by ManagingTeam
Once again, Columbia University is at odds with Jewish groups. Campus Watch notes that the university’s Middle East Institute is honoring Amiri Baraka (pictured), New Jersey’s one-time poet laureate. State legislators abolished the position after he wrote a poem implying Israeli culpability for 9/11. (Hat tip: LGF)
Nemesis6
2:37 pm
Apr 20, 2005
“It’s the joooooooooooz!”
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Robert
3:50 pm
Apr 20, 2005
There are a number of things which this man might be accused of. Literacy is not one of them. Nor accuracy, nor lucidity, nor reason. Least said soonest mended.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Alvin
4:30 pm
Apr 20, 2005
True, true. U have to love the way he said “4000 israelis” didn’t come to work that day in the twin towers. `Cause had he said “jews”, well – some would have said it’s anti-semitism. This way he gets to blame the jews, accuse them of being involved in a conspiracy to destroy the towers and imply they’re all ‘israeli’ (not some wishy-washy ‘double loyalty’ statement) all at the same time.
No doubt a Columbia committee would find nothing improper in all of this.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Diana
4:45 pm
Apr 20, 2005
This is outrageous in two ways.
First, because no universtiy should dignify anti-Semitism by inviting Baraka.
Second, because the invitation is co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute, Rashid Khalidi chairman.
I wonder if Rashid Khalidi has offered any justification for sponsoring Amiri Baraka on April 14. Baraka does not write about the Middle East. He is not from the Middle East. The only thing that I can perceive that his work and the work of the Middle East Institute have in common is a habit of defaming Jews.
In fact, Khalidi seems to be going out of his way wot find anti-Semitic poets to invite, last month he hosted Tom Paulin, the Bard of Jew-Hatred. Now Baraka.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Shy Guy
7:59 pm
Apr 20, 2005
Divest yourselves of Columbia U. It’s way overdue.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jack C
9:21 pm
Apr 20, 2005
Any Jew – no any person who possesses a grain of human decency – would nver invest a single cent in that so-called institution. I suspect that it gets lots of money from benefactors from the Arab States.
Do universities in the US have to disclose the sources of their funding?
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
DLL
9:48 pm
Apr 20, 2005
If this happened in Australia our government would surely step in and close the place.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
6:46 pm
Apr 21, 2005
From the collected works of LeRoi Jones (his real name)
come jew(sic) boy, come for the rent
. . .cuz someday everyone, even my wig wearing momma gonna put it all on you at once”
and do not forget his urging the black community to “stick daggers into the slimy bellies of the jew(sic) owners.
What a disgrace!
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Nemesis6
11:42 pm
Apr 21, 2005
As Jane points out: Stupidity and Anti-semitism often walk hand in hand.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Alvin
6:52 pm
Apr 22, 2005
Amazing, Jane!
Really, it’s a contest – his poetry is as award-winning as his racist beliefs. You could almost argue that when a poetry award can be given to such bad prose it’s not surprising that malicious incitement to racial hatred just isn’t a barrier.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
7:14 pm
Apr 22, 2005
Ah, Poet laurete of New Jersey-thy work is akin to the sheer number of landfills in your “state” of honor. . .
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
9:34 pm
Apr 22, 2005
That should read the the landfills, vast in number. . .hey I am no poet:)
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
9:39 pm
Apr 22, 2005
Here is the actual quote with citation:
“We want …dagger poems in the slimy bellys of the owner-Jews,” “Look at the Liberal Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat and puke himself into eternity,” “Another bad poem cracking steel knuckles in a jewlady’s mouth…”
– Poem “Black Art,” 1966, New York Liberator and others
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
9:45 pm
Apr 22, 2005
One more example of what this man “creates”
Jones launched his literary career with the 1961 publication of his Beat-influenced poetry collection, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. He gained national prominence from the 1964 New York production of Dutchman, a play focusing on the flirtatious interactions between a black man and a white woman. The following year he wrote “American Sexual Reference: Black Male,” an essay that includes musings like this: “Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank. . . . The average ofay [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.” Remarkably, in leftist circles such crude sentiments gained Jones a reputation not as a madman, but as a courageously candid genius.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Alvin
4:12 am
Apr 23, 2005
From which it’s but a small step, to talk of the beauty of smashing punches in a ‘jewlady”s mouth and knifing a ‘jew-boy’
hey! these aren’t real punches and knives, they’re poems (otherwise it would be a call to violence), just like the ’4000 israelis’ who didn’t go to the twin towers aren’t jews, they’re ‘israeli’ (otherwise he’d be a racist, wouldn’t he?).
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Charles Martel
1:01 pm
Apr 23, 2005
25 years ago, Jones/Baraka figured prominently in a poetry class I took at SUNY. The lecturer was a Jewish/Buddhist/Marxist who was linked to the Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado where Baraka, Allen Ginsberg and other “free spirits” taught poetry while molesting their students.
Just a bit of nostalgia for context.
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0
Jane YIS
7:12 am
Apr 26, 2005
Now they molest their student’s minds. . .
Agree or Disagree:
0 
0