FROM THE LION'S DEN: I've been meaning to write about this piece for a while. While I haven't been on Columbia's campus for a while, I did spend much of the 90's there getting undergraduate and law degrees, and I loved the place despite itself. The description in the article sounds all too plausible.
What irritates me most about the prevalence of shallow anti-Americanism on Columbia and other campuses is not even the substance itself (though that's bad enough) or the atrocious quality of thought that goes into much of what passes for argument from those quarters. It's the conviction that they are being non-conformists, bravely rebelling against conventional thought. Campuses - and Columbia is no exception, which I know from first hand experience - are among the most suffocatingly conformist, and homogenous in thought, places in the U.S. today. Here's a tip: You aren't being non-conformist when everyone around you thinks exactly the way you do.
I would appreciate hearing from people with recent first-hand exposure to the Columbia campus as to whether the attitude described above reflects their experience. Click on my "name."
There are too many links to choose from to help illustrate the atmosphere on Columbia campus. Try this article. He's overstating the case to compare Columbia's atmosphere to North Korea, but it's irritating enough.