Monday’s Amanpour & Co. on PBS (and CNN International) invited former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger to criticize the Trump Administration for squelching free speech (a common theme of late on previously federally funded media lately).
Guest host Bianna Golodryga opened the show portentously by promising her guest would show "How to fight against the attack on academic freedom and why American's future depends on it." She briefly skimmed the reason for Trump's acts against progressive colleges -- the anti-semitic campus protests after October 7, though she didn't use that word.
Bollinger has a new book out titled University: A Reckoning, touted on Amazon with this sales language: “From perhaps the most important university leader of the twenty-first century, an account of the university in the age of authoritarianism and a new case for its place in the American system.” Tagging Trump as an authoritarian is an easy way to get booked on CNN and PBS:
GUEST HOST BIANNA GOLODRYGA: …. You'll recall [Columbia University] was home to major protests after October 7th. And now along with other U.S. higher learning institutions, it is struggling to manage threats from the Trump administration. Lee Bollinger is one of America's most well-known academic leaders, including as Columbia's president for over 20 years. And his new book, University: A Reckoning, is a call for academic institutions to stand up against the pressure from the White House.
Bollinger spoke with Michel Martin, in full fawning mode.
MICHEL MARTIN: You've led two of our most prestigious and competitive universities, University of Michigan and Columbia University. And I actually should mention that these were not placid times when you were leading these institutions. There were student protests. There was congressional scrutiny. There was political pressure. There were sort of political currents. But, obviously, you wrote this book thinking that there's something special about this moment. So, what is it about this moment that strikes you as different?
Bollinger burst out of the gate snarling “McCarthyism.”
BOLLINGER: Well, I think the first thing is the federal government assault and intrusion into the academic affairs of university. So that has not really happened. Certainly not to this degree for decades. I mean, you really have to go back to the McCarthy period, which was really about one senator leading a campaign of intolerance. You have to go back to that for something comparable. And so the level of intrusion, the threat to academic freedom, the need to think about universities and their role in the Constitution and the First Amendment is much more imperative today than it really has been in modern history. So that -- that's really the precipitating reason for the book.
Columbia University was the site of some of the most virulent anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas campus protests, harassing students and threatening their ability to gain an education. But the Trump Administration were the bad guys for trying to stop it? The only mention of those offensive protests, the impetus for Trump’s moves, came in Golodryga’s introduction, rendering the interview unbalanced and uninformative.
That's odd for this show, considering that in 2024, Amanpour lauded Columbia as "the heart of the pro-Palestinian campus peace movement." At least at that time, Amanpour asked her guest, a Columbia student journalist, about “student-on-student verbal harassment that has been cited as very damaging and uncomfortable and frightening by some of the Jewish students.”
Martin never touched that. She just recycled Bollinger’s batty talk of tyranny:
MARTIN: In your book, you write, "We are in short witnessing a tectonic shift in America toward the use of authoritarian tactics that threaten our democratic form of government. The university is among the first, along with the press, of the major independent institutions in society to feel the brunt of this new and frightening transformation." I mean, so your point here is that, yes, the universities and the press are on the leading edge of this, but this is really about democracy. What convinces you that? Why do you say that?
Martin only challenged Bollinger from the left, citing Columbia University as Trump appeasers.
MARTIN: And I recognize that this has to be an awkward question for you, as the former leader of this institution, but you do realize that for many people, Columbia is the poster child for appeasement.
Bollinger didn’t bite. Martin laid on another layer of fluff.
MARTIN: So, what do you think people should do right now? People who share the perspective that you share, people who share the concern, the deep concern that you've articulated, and people who also share the love of knowledge and a free thought that you've articulated.
