Last week I wrote about the Board of Directors of the Columbia Law Review taking down the CLR's website because of hanky-panky by the student editors surrounding the acceptance of an anti-Israel screed. My friend Aaron Jaffe has now told me that the web site is back up and that screed is now available for anyone who wants to waste their time reading it.
More interesting to me was the letter from the Board, available through a link on the web site but not prominently displayed:
"The Columbia Law Review Board of Directors received multiple credible reports that a secretive process was used to edit Toward Nakba As a Legal Concept. Some individuals reporting exclusion expressed concerns with the process and the denial of their opportunity to provide input. The Review’s editorial processes are intended to allow all members to engage with the scholarship that the Review publishes and with one another. That engagement is central to the Review’s twin aims of publishing the highest quality legal analysis and educating the next generation of lawyers. Upon learning of this exclusion, the Board of Directors sought to delay publication by several days to permit the excluded members to read the piece and engage with their colleagues before the piece was published. But the piece was published immediately despite the Board’s effort. The Board of Directors traditionally has no role in deciding what scholarship the Review publishes, including this piece. Rather than delay the publication of the May issue any further, the Board of Directors memorializes for now its concerns with the process and its long-term goal of protecting the integrity of the Review. The Board of Directors looks forward to engaging further with the Administrative Board on this matter."
Translation: "Those of us on the Board who aren't spineless wimps are of one accord with the Jew-haters, and we're not going to do anything about this." To paraphrase Doyle Lonagan, not only are the members of the BoD losers. They're gutless losers as well.