Columbia noose update: An innocent professor left hung out to dry
Have you been wondering what’s happening with the Columbia University noose incident? Me, too. I missed the New York Sun’s report earlier this week about an unjustly accused professor whom the school failed to support even after she had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
You probably missed it, too.
Columbia University is issuing a belated defense of a professor who earlier this month was falsely accused of hanging a noose on a colleague’s door.
For weeks, the university has been silent as a tenured professor of psychology and education at the Teachers College, Suniya Luthar, has been portrayed in press reports as a rival professor driven by a personal grudge over a book credit to intimidate a colleague, Madonna Constantine, by hanging a noose from her office door.
The president of Teachers College, Susan Fuhrman, said on Friday that in an effort to protect her privacy, the school had failed to offer Ms. Luthar the “public support she deserved.” Ms. Luthar is “one of the most decent human beings we know,” Ms. Fuhrman said during a speech on the state of Teachers College. “Professor Luthar is an eminent and cherished member of our faculty and deserves the embrace and support of this community.” Reached at her home yesterday, Ms. Luthar said she did not want to “fan the flames” by discussing her reaction. She did say the belated response from Columbia made her wonder “what took them so long.”
Left hung out to dry, Ms. Luthar is showing admirable restraint. I feel much sympathy for her. Her exoneration won’t get on the front page or on the nightly news. She deserves better.
Meanwhile, the push for noose legislation continues apace. The New York Post sounds a note of caution amid the hysteria:
The state Senate on Monday passed a bill that would make it a class E fel ony to place, draw or otherwise display a noose – on public or private property – and too bad about the First Amendment.
Now, the temptation for legislators to get tough on nooses has been understandably strong recently – given the lawmakers’ proclivity to pander, and the uproar over the noose found on a black professor’s door at Columbia’s Teachers’ College earlier this month and the ensuing series of apparent copycat incidents.
Disgusting occurrences, each and every one – but they’re no excuse for an end-run around free-speech rights.
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HEY! Aren’t you supposed to be getting to the set?
The ACLU will step in and fight for the 1st Amendment.
Which school will be the first to suspend six year olds for playing “hang-man” ?
Olberman’s worst person again, you go girl !!
The best thing is for the aclu is to stay out of this since they have constantly shown a double standard for which forms of speech they are willing to allow the First Amendment to represent…
Hate speech by atheists, muslims, and etc—gggoooodd. Preaching the gospel of Yeshua—bbbbaaaddd…
GSP :0
A class E felony to draw a noose, but feel free to accost the Secretary of State with red paint on your hands and scream at her that she is a war criminal. Yeah, that makes sense.
In high school, a friend of mine decided to play a joke on the wrestlers (who were always taking over our stage!) and hung their wrestling dummy, with a noose, natch, from the rafters above the stage. We all thought it was hilarious, even the wrestlers. Poor guy, if he would have pulled some stunt like that today, he probably would be in jail right now.
They should ban the drawing of the running bowline knot, because it looks sort of like a hangman’s noose, but they can ban that and some other knots that kind of look like a noose, and call it the “assault knot ban”.
Speaking of the stupid arguments that you get into when you’re arguing stuff like this, does it specify a “noose” or “hangmans noose”? They’re different.
This might be a way for the left to get rid of the boy scouts and their pesky slip knots once and for all!
(note the link for the NYP is the NY Sun link)
housewife,
and crossing the border? slap on hand.
and Identity theft….joke.
etc,etc,etc.
Still no Reverend Jackson or Al Sharpton? NAACP?
Maybe they are too busy endorsing Obama (who is biracial, not “black”).
I’ve been wondering for a while whatever happened to this Columbia case.
The media no longer seems to care.
Interesting.
Senate = Bunch of screaming morons.
In 6 days I will have a plastic skeleton in a noose in my apple tree in the front yard.
I will also have ‘burning’ caldrons, jack o lanterns, a moat, a moat monster, a witch (err.. who didn’t guess that was me
) and over 300 happy trick or treaters.
If the senate can’t take a joke then they should at least get a clue.
Would anyone care to find the numbers of who has been killed by hangings? More white people or african-americans? Since death by hanging was very popular in Europe and in the ‘Wild West’… I’m willing to take a guess here and go with caucasions.
But as I have to go get my mother from the hospital this morning. I’ll have to do the research later.
To keep things organized in my tool shed, I tie up my extension cords somewhat like a noose. My dad taught me that years ago. I even have some at my office like this. Does that mean I, too, will be subject to this new law?
Apparently, all other crises have been solved to spend so much time on this.
I’m sure there will be an exemption if the noose is around an effigy of President Bush or any republican, white or black.
I’m curious what came of the video from Columbia turned over to the pollice. Did they determine who hung the noose?
What happened to the video?
I never heard what the security tapes revealed… anyone heard?
Well! If that unconstitutional law goes through, there won’t be any “hang Bush dummies in effigy”, right?
This goes down with the 7 year old drawing a stick figure with a squirt gun!
Another PC law: Children cannot be children any more!!
Nice to see Michelle on Fox/Friends. Yeah for our side!
I represent the Wiccans of America, and I have a cease and desist order here. Don’t you realize how many Wiccans are offended by your cauldrons?
And why is it OK to hang skeletons by a noose? This makes many skeletons remember the dark days of the past when skeletons were routinely hung, without benefit of counsel or a trial.
And I hope you’ve contacted your local environmental board to make sure that you’re not wiping out the last remaining nesting ground of the Greater Eastern Slug by your callous building of a moat!
I, too, am interested in what was on that tape. Ms. Malkin, do you still believe that Columbia is/was stonewalling?
Yet, they welcome a thug president of a rogue country to speak on campus….
Karma is going to bite them in the buttocks one of these days.
I am thinking the same thing. Did anyone check Sandy Buglers shorts?
Columbia has displayed the same lack of character that the administration of Duke University showed in the Rape Hoax case. But not for as long a time.
Duke later had to settle (sealed, so we don’t know the terms) with the three falsely accused students.
Durham choked on the settlement offer (it included procedural reforms as well as $30 million dollars), soon discovery will begin. I expect that Durham will wish they’d settled, but I’m glad they didn’t. Discovery should expose Durham to much needed sunlight.
Off topic (H/T Drudge) A Washington Times reporter has noticed that anti-war, anti-Bush films do poorly at the box office.
So if I loosen my tie and throw the end of it over my shoulder is it a Class E felony?
The last big news on this story was the University was not releasing the security tapes to the police. Then they stated they were going to let the police review the tapes and now complete silence on what the tapes showed.
I would love if you or someone on your staff could contact the police to do a follow up to see if they identified who did this and if it was maybe Madonna Constantine herself that did it to create a false story and report.
Will this legislation restrict the right to make jokes about hanging conservative authors/figures (as in MMs report on tech site BoingBoing)? Or does that only hold if the joke was accompanied by a drawing of a noose to go with it?
maine yankee – good point about Hangman. It will probably one day be a legend that children whisper in the schoolyards, like tag and other barbaric games of yesteryear.
So I guess no more art with nooses or say, TV shows or movies that make use of a noose in the plot as this would BE ILLEGAL. Huh? What happened to my right of freedom of expression? This senate has to be the dumbest collection of rocks that I have ever seen.
Criminalizing an object shows the abject thinking ability of many politicians and those that support these types of laws. As we continue to criminalize all behavior, the only justice is when these same pols get caught by their own laws. Stop the madness.
I hadn’t heard anything about this in while. I figured no noose was good noose.
Who HUNG the NOOSE?
I wish we still would participate in the great candy giveaway of Halloween, but the last couple of years our neighborhood has been getting overrun by people of questionable legal status in the country who can barely speak a sentence in English. The kids were OK, but when adults would show up at the door with a pillow case we decided we were done. Thanks so much “Happy Feet” Craig for continuing to vote support the invasion of our country, state, county, and town.
Pretty soon spitting on the side of the road during a high cardio workout will get you put in jail for a perceived hate crime. I am really getting sick of these attention whores faking a hate crime to maintain their victim status. Time to quit covering for these people and shun them like the pariah on society they are.
The police have already cleared the professor victim as a suspect. That was done very quickly. Not that you would know that because MM did nothing to update the original story when this board was wildly speculating on Professor Constantine’s guilt (I am looking at you guitarguy, justagrunt, mojoe, englishqueen, gabe, allrsn, bear11909, ringo the gringo, Rick Moran, Zorro, yashmak and ConservativeRus).
Considering all the indignation being expressed at Columbia for not coming to the support of its professor I am sure, just sure in my heart of hearts, that all these folks will jump at the opportunity to post here and express their regret for smearing Professor Constantine.
It is also too bad for the liberals who have been hanging nooses on door handles and other places in order to
showinvent racist acts.Isn’t it odd that not one culprit has been found in these noose incidents?
This type of thing happened at UVA recently. There were all sorts of racist acts being reported by individual persons. Not surprisingly, they never could find any culprits even though these acts supposedly happened in public places such as sidewalks and streets.
But it was a great excuse for whining and bemoaning racist America, committees to deal with the problem, articles in alumni magazines, emergency alerts, etc.
Judging by their behavior, liberals relish racist acts.
Fun stuff. If Luthar HAD done it, then it would have been a nice example of how nooses frequently AREN’T inherently racist.
Still waiting to see who actually did it.
Was anyone ever able to confirm if there was footage missing from the surveillance tapes?
The first article above I linked to was from 2002 about a racist incident at UVA that–surprise–no one was able to corroborate or find the culprit.
Here is an article from Newsweek in 2005 about nine separate incidents of “racism” at UVA that no one could culprits for:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/09/18/racist_incidents_unnerve_virginia_university/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+–+National+News
You would think that these charges would be looked at as suspect when they occur with no witnesses. But these schools use them to unleash denunciations of Western society and racism.
Yeah, cause I know when I go out to perform illegal acts I like as many people around as possible. But maybe I am just a exhibitionist.
You are letting your imagination get the best of you. Not every unsolved crime is evidence of the vast left wing conspiracy to foment hate and distrust. We are much more selective than that.
How much do you want to bet that Madonna Constantine hung the noose on her own door in an effort to save her job (or cover something else up). Sounds too much like the women that vandalized her own car as identified on the CBS news:
Cops: ‘Hate Crime’ A Hoax
Police Say Calif. College Prof Vandalized Her Own Car
CLAREMONT, Calif., March 18, 2004
Here’s the link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/18/national/main607092.shtml
Well, you would think at least ONE of these racist acts would be solved and they would find a culprit. But no, they never do.
The return is so good for liberals: Invent racist acts in order to prove there is racism in a society with very little of it. Then we can have an orgy of nonstop denunciation of the racism of successful, capitalist Western Civilization.
Because liberals are moral relativists who have rejected absolute values of Western society, inventing a crime isn’t so bad if it proves their beliefs about the West.
Thus, we have Scott Beauchamp and all these racist incidents no one can corrobarate.
If you have actual evidence that the Columbia incident or the UVA incidents were fabricated, then please step right up. But you can’t. Because all you, or any of the other posters here, have is stupid conjecture based solely upon a handful of unfortunate incidents like GWU or the Claremont prof that were legitimate examples of race-baiting.
If you are going to argue that way, let me point you to the thousands of actual verifiable incidents of racism and race/hate crimes that occur every year.
Your desire to view every incident through the lens of your war between the libtards/dimmocrats/commies/muslims/etc. versus the good upstanding Christian Republican blinds you in many ways, but specifically here to the fact that racism does exist and minorities are often the target of racial attacks from bad people. Sometimes these crimes are not solved. That is the simple, real life, explanation. But it doesn’t fit your script, so you ignore it.
Yeah,
Let’s see how this ultimately turns out. However it turns out, I hope it’s posted on the site. One can look and B.O.R and his initial treating of the Shawn Hornbeck case to see where glib, conjecture and speculation can take you.
Let’s see, they’ve had the security video for how long? Anyone on it? Ooops, someone who doesn’t fill the narrative? I think they’ll discover the perp the same day Sandy Burglar takes his lie detector test.
fill = fit, not enough coffee.
This is certainly an intriguing case. Last we spoke, Chapoutier brought it to my attention that it was reported that the NYPD cleared Madonna of any wrong doing by stating something like, “our victim is a victim.”
Such a certain statement (made less than a week after the incident occurred, and less than 3 days after the videotape was handed over)must imply that Madonna AND anyone sympathetic to her interests couldn’t have been involved in the incident. Otherwise, Madonna could have craftily used someone else to hang the noose to gain her sympathy. The NYPD seemed to have immediately ruled any of this out.
My next thought was that, the NYPD were also indicating that they had the goods on someone else who either had ill will for Madonna…or that the incident was a totally random incident.
Now I learn that her ONE reported enemy, a fellow professor, was quietly cleared. Who does this leave as suspect?
Does anyone else find it curious that the NYPD were able to clear the main character of this story of any involvement, right out of the gates, without having any other apparent suspects or people of interest lined up, based on some sort of established evidence?
Care to post a link on this?
Only person cleared see in these reports is that Professor Luthar was cleared.
Again after reviewing the video tape the Police and University can identify WHO the suspects in the case are, but nothing had been reported on it.
Gladly.
This is where I first saw it. Note the date is October 12. Of course, though, there was no update here. I have seen this confirmed in many other stories.
This was indeed established through AP reporting mere days after the videotape was released (hat tip-chapoutier.)
I just don’t understand why no statement has followed on any suspect who immediately ruled out possible involvement by the accuser.
Not. Holding. Breath.
They say liberals don’t have a backbone.
Right.
Well said chapoutier.
I doubt pressto will respond to your link in his same flippant tone seeing that you provided evidence to prove your point.
Ms. Chapoutier,,, you should not lump all republicans as Christians and many are not. Furthermore, Its the Christian folk that seem to have more persecution then the Muslims do and thats natural cause Jesus said True Christians will face persecution. Anyone saying as Jesus says that “Iam the Way,,,” and only way to heaven will be branded as bigoted and hateful. I guess they would call Jesus hateful and bigoted too since He said He is the only way to heaven.
It was Mrs. White, in the Dining Room, with the Rope.
RACIST!