COLUMBIA COLLEGE CONSERVATIVE CLUB
www.columbia.edu/cu/conservative

Ever since Columbia University announced its choice of Michael Bellesiles as a 2001 Bancroft Award winner for "Arming America: The History of a National Gun Culture," they have been under increasing pressure to re-evaluate their position due to the historical inaccuracies and irregular research methodology in the book.  Between the announcement and presentation of the Bancroft Award, the committee had willfully ignored all evidence of flaws in the work and thereafter had defended the author. Only after Emory University suspended Professor Bellesiles, did Columbia University seriously look into the matter. Despite the 18 months of consistent criticism, Columbia has apparently learned nothing. Its modus operandi has been to belittle criticism of the work and then to engage in damage control.

The Trustees of Columbia may have rescinded the prize, but they did it quietly, too quietly. To ensure minimal press coverage and student response, they released the statement on a Friday immediately preceding the undergraduate exam season. Most notably, the notice is not available on the Columbia web site. Likewise, the Trustees failed to inform the Columbia community or involved student groups. They barely acknowledge their mistake in their press release and went out of their way to protect their ideological bona fides.

"In making their decision, the Trustees emphasized that the judgment to rescind the Bancroft Prize was based solely on the evaluation of the questionable scholarship of the work and had nothing to do with the book's content or the author's point of view," they wrote.

The truth is that had the Trustees enforced this standard in the committee choosing Bancroft Award nominees and winners, Bellesiles would never have gotten the award. However, the ideological make-up of the committee precluded honest appraisals of candidates' submissions. To the best of our knowledge, this problem continues unabated. There is no incentive for a member to question an author/historian, with whom he or she agrees (especially one who has gotten good reviews from the establishment (liberal) media). It is no coincidence that each of the 2001 award winners wrote leftist revisionist books, as is evidenced by their profiles published at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/04/bancroft.html

The decisions of the Trustees, the History Department, and the Bancroft Award committee have clearly damaged the reputation of the University, its many prizes, and that of the late Secretary of State and donor to Columbia, Frederic Bancroft.

The only way to prevent the recurrence of this fiasco is to promote ideological diversity on the selection committees. Ideological conflict between a reviewer and writer is the best way to ensure that the author's work will be properly vetted. Evenhandedness and professionalism are not valued in the politically correct atmosphere of academia. This applies as much to departments as to committees at Columbia and other universities.

For the sake of these institutions and students at Columbia, there must be true academic integrity, if not outright ideological balance in the Bancroft Award Committee and the History Department. The nomination process for the Bancroft Award and other prizes needs to be publicized so that interested third parties can expose flawed nominees. If the Bancroft Award and other honors presented by Columbia are to have any significance, they must be based on merit and fact, not ideological preference.

Finally, the Bellesiles Committee, and the History Department must explain how they could grant Bellesiles the Bancroft award despite the widespread criticism of Bellesiles "questionable scholarship" practices. In the days between the announcement of the award winners and the ceremony, the Columbia College Conservative Club informed members of the Bancroft Award committee, and then the larger History Department of the factual and methodological failings of "Arming America," only to be systematically ignored. Likewise, hundreds of concerned Americans and Columbia Alumni contacted the university after Kimberly Strassel broke the story in the Wall Street Journal two weeks before the award ceremony. There has been an institutional failure at every level including (but not limited to) the offices of Alumni Relations and Public Affairs, professors in the History Department, and finally, those with the ultimate responsibility: the University President and the Trustees.

The failure of the Columbia Trustees to properly oversee the History Department and the Bancroft Award committee suggests that the ideological corruption of the university has reached its highest levels and the institution must be structurally reformed. George Rupp, the former president of the university, was clearly negligent on this matter.  It is our sincere hope that President Bollinger can put aside his well-publicized ideological biases and promote balance and openness in his oversight role.

Columbia has been taken over by a system that favors proper political views and politicking over academic and historical standards. There needs to be significant structural and personnel reforms in the university staff, History Department, and Trustees.

Our ultimate cry is for academic integrity, and we demand that it be heeded.

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The Columbia College Conservative Club (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/conservative) was founded to promote the ideas of liberty and individual responsibility, which formed the basis of the United States and of our continued freedom and prosperity. For all too many years these ideas have been ignored or attacked on this campus. Our goal at CCCC is to provide the necessary ideological balance to Columbia and to end the 40 years of leftist decline at the university.