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Remarks at Columbia Trigger Protests
Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova set off heated opposition in March when he said at a teach-in about the Iraq war that he hoped the United States would lose the war and that there would be a "million Mogadishus," a reference to the deaths in 1993 of eighteen U.S. soldiers in Somalia. Other professors involved in the teach-in criticized De Genova's remarks, with one calling them "idiotic." Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, issued a statement defending the professor's right to free speech while noting that he spoke in his capacity as an individual and not as a representative of the university. Bollinger said he was "shocked" by De Genova's statement, however, and that the statement "crosse[d] the line.
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