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Jewish groups blast Robinson choice

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Robinson, formerly president of Ireland and United Nations commissioner on human rights, organized the 2001 UN Durban conference that was deemed by some to be so anti-Israel in its agenda that the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, boycotted it.
Columbia has “become a hotbed of anti-Israel haters,” said the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein. “It’s especially astonishing that a school with such a large Jewish population . . . would insult Jewish people by hiring these haters of the Jewish state of Israel.”
James Tisch, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said: “Under Mary Robinson’s leadership the Human Rights Commission was one-sided and extremist. In her tenure at the HRC, she lacked fairness in her approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I am hopeful — for the sake of her students and the reputation of Columbia — that as she enters the world of academia she will demonstrate more balance in her views.”
Robinson will teach a course on human rights and globalization and serve as an adviser to the Columbia University Earth Institute and as a research scholar at the School of Law’s Human Rights Institute.
Robinson herself was unavailable for comment, but Columbia professors at the School of International and Public Affairs defended her, saying her contribution to the school and its students would be invaluable.
“She brings a number of things,” Lisa Anderson, SIPA’s dean, said. “We have quite a robust concentration in human rights and she is one of the most distinguished practitioners of human rights in the world.”
The university’s president, Lee Bollinger, called Robinson “a tremendous resource.”
“She brings three enormous assets to the university,” said Peter Danchin, who also teaches at SIPA and described Robinson as being “highly effective.”
“First, truly exceptional experience in the field of international human rights, primarily due to her former post as UN High commissioner for human rights.
“Secondly, [she has] a great command of the academic debates in international law and human rights, and the ability to contextualize these in terms of current geopolitical realities and politics, and, third, ongoing engagement in human rights work, most especially via her Ethical Globalization Initiative and work with a range of other NGOs and civil society actors.
“Each of these three factors will greatly enrich both faculty and student study and work on human rights at Columbia,” Danchin concluded.
Anderson added that Robinson accepted the job partly because of her love of New York City.
“I don’t think she talked to very many other people [about taking a position] because she loves New York,” she said. “She decided she wanted to be in New York for a while. Had Columbia not worked out, lots of people would have loved to have her.”

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