Deja Vu All Over Again

clipped from www.wymaninstitute.org "Academic relationships have no political implications," President Butler claimed. Many Columbia students and faculty members disagreed, Prof Norwood notes. Students held a "Mock Heidelberg Festival" on campus, complete with a bonfire and mock book burning. That was followed by a student rally in front of Butler's mansion. Butler was furious that a leader of the rally, Robert Burke, "delivered a speech in which he referred to the President [Butler] disrespectfully." As punishment, Burke was expelled from Columbia. He was never readmitted, even though he had excellent grades and had been elected president of his class, and even though Columbia’s own attorney later acknowledged that “the evidence that Burke himself used bad language is slight.” Eventually, in the late 1930s, Butler would change his position and speak out against the Nazis. Unfortunately, it was too late to undo the damage he already had done by helping to legitimize the Hitler regime.