The Independent, October 11, 2007
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
New York’s Columbia University, usually regarded as a bastion of liberal thinking and tolerance, became the latest flashpoint on the ever-incendiary American issue of race yesterday after a hangman’s noose was pinned up on a black psychology professor’s office door.
The noose, evoking memories of the worst days of segregation in the American South, sparked noisy campus protests and an official hate-crime investigation. University leaders said they had no idea whether a student or a faculty member was responsible.
The professor, Madonna Constantine, was said to be devastated by the incident. A specialist in race relations, she works in a graduate department called Teachers College, whose mission in the early part of the 20th century included hiring black teachers prevented from working in their native Southern states.
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