Mohamed's Ghosts by Stephan Salisbury

Author:Stephan Salisbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2010-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

BACK AT COLUMBIA, the belief that police were secretly on campus, a belief first born of caution, grew steadily and, as campus politics radicalized, blossomed into paranoia. Who was on the NYPD or FBI payroll? Who was simply soaking up and passing along information about SDS? Whom could you talk to? Who was wired? Such was college life in New York City, circa 1969. FBI and police documents indicate that informers within the political groups and even in the university administration were passing information to authorities. Identities of those attending meetings on campus, what was said by whom, what occurred at closed disciplinary sessions following various demonstrations—law enforcement agents were privy to all. One FBI memo from 1972 states simply: “By way of information, a number of students and members of Students for a Restructured University, opponents of SDS tactics and the disruption of classes, voluntarily appeared at the [FBI’s New York Office] to offer their assistance during the disruptions, but only a handful of faculty members out of 4,900 called the NYO.”

Collusion between university officials and police was deep and multifaceted. New York City police, for instance, were allowed access by administrators to a closed 1967 Columbia disciplinary hearing held to determine what to do with eighteen students who staged a sit-in to protest and prevent CIA recruiting on campus. The police memo that detailed the hearing lists not only those charged with the sit in; it helpfully provides the names of over seventy additional students and faculty members who supported those accused of violating a university regulation. Faculty members seemed particularly irksome to the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services. When students occupied buildings in April and May 1968, plainclothes police attacked several faculty members with blackjacks and saps. The first bloodied professor was Richard Greeman, an assistant professor of French. He sympathized with the goals of the students, as I recall, and police were well aware of his political activities and seemed to head right for him. Greeman’s name crops up in NYPD files as early as 1965, when he spoke against U.S. involvement in Vietnam at a campus meeting. Seven others spoke at the meeting, which “ended without incident.”

“The files of this command,” the police memo continues, “have been amended to include the names mentioned in this report” (including “Richard Greeman, French Teacher, Columbia University”).

Greeman now lives in France, and I asked him if the police went after him during those demonstrations long ago. No, he said, they went after those who were simply there. He was on the front lines and took the hit. Greeman soon left Columbia for another teaching position, but not, he said, because of blackballing or political pressure applied by higher ups in his department or in the Columbia administration. There is some doubt that the same can be said for younger faculty members in other departments. One now-prominent professor, a brilliant teacher and fine writer, failed to obtain tenure in the English Department, ostensibly because of budget problems that beset the university following 1968.

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