Tell Zionist hoodlums at Columbia to go fly a kite

"Spectator covered the story using terminology and quotation techniques that I find worrisome. An article on Oct. 4 gave ample space to pro-Israel groups and almost no space to the defense of Massad (the lone citation absolving him was attributed, strangely enough, to University President Lee Bollinger, who is no friend of Massad). In an otherwise careful article, news writer Sammy Roth writes: “[Kenneth] Marcus, who headed the OCR himself between 2003 and 2004, told Spectator that the chair of Barnard’s Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures department illegally ‘steered’ the student away from taking the class because Massad, a sharp critic of Israel, has often been accused of anti-Semitism.”   Though Marcus is mentioned, the charge of anti-Semitism is so distant from the subject that the reader does not know whether the allegation of anti-Semitism is Marcus’ own assertion, or whether it is a commonly observed “fact” that bears no need for an explanation—or in this case, attribution. In addition, the serious charge of anti-Semitism could easily have been discredited after a simple investigation of available official records. It is this highly explosive ambiguity that raises eyebrows, further underlining the need for these accusations to be credited to specific, explicitly quoted sources."