Columbia University’s president, Lee Bollinger, last night called on universities to devote more energy to studying global issues, particularly those concerning Israel and the Arab and Muslim world.

Speaking to more than 250 people who gathered at the Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side, Mr. Bollinger said there is an unfortunate lack of connection between “what we’re teaching and the outside world.” He also decried recent waves of criticism against the Ivy League institution that it is biased against Israel and Jews. He said the Morningside Heights school, which he has led since 2002, is a place where “Jewish students flourish, Jewish faculty flourish, and friends of Israel flourish.”

Mr. Bollinger last night took part in an “armchair discussion” titled “Academic Integrity, the Middle East & the State of the Academy” with the president of New York University, John Sexton. Yeshiva University’s president, Richard Joel, was the moderator of the event, which was part of the synagogue’s Rudin Lecture Series.

Despite the weighty topics on the agenda, the discussion was casual, collegial, and touched only briefly on the Middle East affairs and scholarship. Instead, the men talked generally about their universities’ curricula, their quotidian interactions with students and faculty, and their ideas on academic inquiry and freedom.

Toward the end of the hour-and-ahalf meeting of minds, Mr. Sexton, who has held NYU’s top job since 2002, said that there is too much interference from “watchgroups” in the goings-on at universities.

“This kind of external inquisition could end up destroying the university we’ve talked about here tonight,” he said.