DE GENOVA UPDATE: Apparently, Columbia alumni are upset:

Some alumni donors are pressuring the president’s office and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations to fire Professor Nicholas De Genova for statements he made in last week’s anti-war teach-in.

In the past few days, donors have barraged the offices with emails and phone calls, informing the University that they feel that De Genova overstepped the limits of academic free speech.

In mass-mailed email messages circulated among each other, alumni have urged each other to issue an ultimatum to the University: Fire De Genova or lose our donations. . . .

CC alumnus Steve Stuart wrote an email a few days ago to over 100 alumni–whose combined “net worth,” he said, is at least $250 million–asking them to express outrage to University President Lee Bollinger.

Frank Cicero, CC ’92 and Senior Vice President of Investment Banking at Lehman Brothers, told Bollinger that he felt De Genova’s presence on campus “pollutes the educational atmosphere.”

That “pollution” may compel Cicero to stop contributing to the University.

“In the past, I believed that it was naive and in bad taste for alumni to withhold gifts because of the political opinions of faculty members,” Cicero said in his email to Bollinger. “However, I am now considering doing just that in response to the vile and mendacious comments made by De Genova.”

I don’t think that De Genova should be fired, even for vile comments — though it’s certainly okay for alumni to withhold their contributions if they choose, as it’s their money — but I can’t help but feel that a faculty member who called for “a million Matthew Shepards” would already be gone.