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An article in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times contrasted Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s reputation as a First Amendment scholar with the rapidly growing perception of Columbia as a campus that stifles students’ fundamental freedoms.

The article by Karen Arenson and Tamar Lewin pointed out that Columbia has been involved in four separate free-speech disputes in just the past month: over the language in a hockey club’s flier; the retraction of an invitation to the president of Iran to speak on campus; the use of an ideological litmus test by Teachers College; and the violent melee that shut down a speech by the founder of the Minuteman Project.

While some sources in the article praised Bollinger’s reactions to the recent controversies that have plagued his campus, FIREPresident Greg Lukianoff had a different point of view, stating:

Bollinger definitely knows how to say the right things about free speech, but the question is whether he can walk the walk.

FIRE is waiting for a response from President Bollinger regarding our second letter concerning the current policy at Teachers College. We hope he chooses to “walk the walk” and lives up to his reputation as a scholar of freedom of expression.