‘Lindsay Legacy Could Be Garth’s Gift to Bloomberg’

Thanks for Andrew Wolf’s excellent piece on the correlations between the upcoming mayoral election and that of 1969, correlations that I have been surprised no one has covered to date [“Lindsay Legacy Could Be Garth’s Gift to Bloomberg,” Opinion, March 24, 2005]. Much of The New York Sun’s election coverage has focused on Mr. Bloomberg’s challenge from the right, ignoring the lesson of how a similar challenge worked to John Lindsay’s advantage.

By losing the Republican primary (to John Marchi, still a state senator from Staten Island), Lindsay was able to reposition himself as an independent, and won a three-way race. Were Mr. Bloomberg to lose his primary and run on another line, many New Yorkers who simply don’t like the idea of voting for a “Republican” would feel far more comfortable voting for a man whose accomplishments they must admit they admire.

ANDREW CASE
Brooklyn

Schiavo a U.S. Phenomenon

Re: “Schiavo Case Is Solely a U.S. Phenomenon,” Alicia Colon, New York, March 29, 2005. Ms. Colon says she has never been prouder to be an American because of the way we have reacted to the treatment of Terri Schiavo and the way Europeans view us as religious extremists over the fight to save this young woman.

It has nothing at all to do with religious extremes. It’s the same reaction Americans have to rescuing a downed airman behind enemy lines or a Marine or GI throwing themselves on a grenade to save their buddies.

Old Europe will never understand the glue that holds this country and its people together.

RON MOORE
Harbor Springs, Mich.

I wonder what the result would have been had Claus Von Bulow, who was tried twice for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny (who remains in a coma), been named his wife’s guardian and had petitioned the court to remove her feeding tube. I am sure that her children and the public at large would have been outraged.

ALICE LEMOS
Woodside, N.Y.

‘Harvard’s 10,000’

Professor Sumner Rosen omits the importance of university presidents’ fiduciary duties [“Harvard’s 10,000,” Letters, March 28, 2005]. Like any trustee, a university president is obliged to ensure that university faculties do not behave arbitrarily or capriciously. A university president is responsible not only to supply resources but also to ensure that the resources are used to advance knowledge. Moreover, part of a university president’s duty is to ensure that due diligence has been performed in hiring and performance evaluation, and that processes are neither arbitrary nor capricious.

Having spent 19 years in academia, including five as a doctoral student at the Columbia Business School, I have noticed that presidents often have executed their fiduciary duties lackadaisically, and that the time is ripe for a more activist fiduciary presidential role such as the one President Bollinger at Columbia has recently demonstrated.

Professor Rosen’s claim that you have no basis for describing Harvard’s faculty as left wing is disingenuous. A study presented at the last conference of the National Association of Scholars to appear in the journal Academic Questions confirms the obvious: that the academic left has intolerantly excluded alternative views. Left-wing political correctness has long been a cornerstone to a career in most branches of the social sciences and humanities. This finding alone suggests fiduciary breaches by mainstream faculties that require university presidents’ correction.

MITCHELL LANGBERT
Associate professor of business
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn

Faculties Lean Further Left

Re: “College Faculty Members Are Found to Lean Further Left Than Expected,” Howard Kurtz, Page 1, March 30, 2005: I wish that someone would explain to me why the same grand rules of “academic freedom” and “intellectual diversity” that encourage the “free exchange of ideas” and work to support the strange ideas of Ward Churchill at Colorado and the intimidation of dissenting students at the Middle East Department at Columbia, do not also apply to President Summers at Harvard.

BERNARD LIEBERMAN
Forest Hills, N.Y.

Faculty Revolt at Columbia

Re: Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s assertion at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York that there is no “hostile climate” for Jewish faculty at Columbia [“Faculty Revolt Is Brewing at Columbia,” Jacob Gershman, Page 1, March 24, 2005]: I attended an open forum concerning anti-Semitism at Columbia at the American Jewish Congress in Manhattan on March 22, in which Jewish members of the Columbia faculty participated.

These professors all testified that any Columbia faculty member who openly supports Zionism is marginalized, ostracized, and denied tenure. This is the sad anti-Semitic reality at Columbia that Mr. Bollinger refuses to acknowledge.

RICHARD SHERMAN
Brooklyn

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