July 8, 2005

'Outside Groups'and Academe

To the Editor:

Jon Wiener's essay requires several comments ("When Students Complain About Professors, Who Gets to Define the Controversy?," The Chronicle Review, May 13). His contrast of the Stephan Thernstrom affair with the one that continues to unfold at Columbia University over Middle Eastern studies situates both in a crude left-right dichotomy. In his predictable morality tale, the left lost, in part because the right was "well financed." This sort of simplistic reductionism