Oct 9, 2007 11:32 pm US/Eastern
Noose Found Hanging On Columbia U. Professor's Door
Students At Bastion Of Liberal Activism Outraged
NEW YORK (AP) ―
A hangman's noose was discovered Tuesday on the office door of a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, police said.
The 44-year-old professor, who is black, found the noose on her door shortly before 10 a.m. Detectives and the New York Police Department's hate crime task force were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, police said. Nooses are reviled by many as symbols of lynchings in the Old South.
Students at the school, considered a bastion of liberal activism, were outraged.
"It's really really disturbing," student Mary Owens said. "These racist practices have been in place for so long, and they really have to be rooted out by everyone."
Teachers College President Susan H. Fuhrman sent an e-mail to the college's 5,000 students and 150 faculty members explaining why police were on campus.
"The Teachers College community and I deplore this hateful act, which violates every Teachers College and societal norm," according to the statement said.
Columbia has not identified the professor but students told WNBC-TV she teaches a class on racial justice. "We foster multiculturalism, and she is just a proponent of those issues," Owens said.
Student Mikayla Graham said the incident was shameful.
"You would think, Columbia being such a diversion campus and New York being such a diverse city, it shouldn't happen here," she said.
Last year in Jena, La., three white students hung nooses from a big oak tree outside Jena High School. They were suspended but not prosecuted. Racial tensions rose and a white student was beaten unconscious three months later.
Recently, thousands of people protested the arrests of six black students in the incident.
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