Submitted by Daniel Breslau, Feb 28, 2008 10:53

Columbia University has assembled an absolute powerhouse of top-notch scholars on the Middle East, and that is something that New Yorkers should know about and should be proud of. This is the epitome of a university's role in a democratic society, of creating a space for advanced (and free) inquiry in a topic that is of such pressing national, and global, importance.
When a group of faculty at my institution were planning a speaker series to provide our community with high-quality current scholarship on the middle east, three of the top five people on our wish list of speakers were Columbia professors.
As a well-known and widely respected sociologist, Yinon Cohen is a great addition, and is an excellent choice to lead the Israel Studies institute. It is inevitable that his personal views (which are firmly within the mainstream of opinion) will be objectionable to those for whom support of Israel's policies is more important than quality scholarship.

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