Thank you.
Michael Coleman
Legal@Federalist.com

An editor responds...
We at The Fed don't know what you're talking about. Our publication is known as "The Fed", not "The Federalist", and has been so named for over a year. It seems to us that the issue is even more clear-cut that the dispute between the "Ghostbusters" and "The Real Ghostbusters" cartoon shows. If you will recall, in that case, "Ghostbusters" did hold the copyright for the name of the show, but the producers of "The Real Ghostbusters" had purchased the television rights the "Ghostbusters" film from Columbia pictures. So the "Ghostbusters" show got to keep the name, but nobody bought that cheap knock-off crap.

People knew who the REAL Ghostbusters were, as evidenced by the remarkable disparity in merchandising sales.

We propose that you keep the name "The Federalist", and we continue using the name "The Fed." The public will decide whose action figures to buy. You're welcome.

Edward Scharff
Editor At Large

21 June 2000

An Open Letter to the Trustees, Administration, and Faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University:

2W64 is a learning community and an educational "Do Tank" for the new millennium. We are doctoral and master level students who are leaving the Program of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in order to create a community of active life-long liberal learners. We believe in living the life of philosophers of education by continually asking who we can inspire, who we can help, and what we can build in society. This endeavor is necessarily plural, pro-active, and dynamic, not beholden to the narrow constraints of traditional educational institutions.

The new century requires progressive, imaginative, and philosophically diverse courses of action to address the many challenges we face in education today. Yet, the tradition of Progressive Education at Teachers College is dead. The administration's failure to see the value in supporting a strong program in Philosophy and Education makes this apparent. Our former department has been dissolved and reduced to a mere "program" with fewer than 2 full-time faculty members advising a total of 54 students. Our former endowed chair in Philosophy and Education has been given away to serve an agenda of the administration, and not the needs of the students. Our most celebrated and revered faculty member, Maxine Greene, receives little to no support in developing her vital center for the study of imagination in education. We, the students, are left with no "center" of our own, no infrastructure, no focus, no curriculum of common purpose, no leadership, and no commitment from the College to reverse this trend toward extinction. We don't even have a seminar table at which to sit and grow with one another.

Given the extreme emotional and financial expense each one of us has incurred over the years, one would think we have gained something to show for it. Rather, many of us have nothing to show for our experience at Teachers College except paralyzing debt and a feeling of profound betrayal from the very educators who are held to be the best in their disciplines.

We reject the current trend in schools of education toward ever-increasing specialization and the privation of "knowledge" at the expense of productive dialogues aimed at addressing the important issues in education. Our purpose is to exemplify and foster innovation in education by leaving behind the limiting and oppressive conditions we have experienced at Teachers College. We are independent revolutionaries who share a common vision for creating new possibilities in educational enterprise.

Michael Barth

Dear Editor,

As a graduate of Columbia University (Journalism, 1978), I must tell you I was ashamed to see what counts as "freedom of speech" at the university these days. A segment tonight on an ABC news special examined the way students at many universities have lately adopted a "shout them down" approach to views and speakers they disagree with. The incident at Columbia, involving an African American speaker who opposes affirmative action policies, was especially awful because of the smug self-satisfaction displayed later by the so-called students in an interview with John Stossel. I certainly will not be encouraging my sons to attend Columbia if this is the current style on 116th and Broadway.

David Burns
Springfield, VA
davburns@erols.com

An editor responds...
I checked the Bulletin for what counts as freedom of speech at the University these days and did not find anything. Perhaps you should write the Administration. Also, I have noticed this trend with regard to the burgeoning "shout them down" approach, and have often wondered to myself if this is not just the product of maturing in homes where the authority figures adopt this approach towards us. I do not know. I believe sometimes that this is why I begin every argument with, "Shut up, kid..." I do not know. Regardless, I think it is terrific that you attended the J School, and I am sorry to hear that your fine sons will not be seen on this campus, provided E! does not save us from our Style Emergency.

Anna Chodos
Editor in Chief

From: Leland Mellott
To: thechief@virtualjerusalem.com
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2000 3:45 PM
Subject: The Turning Word Of Things

Addendum:
Strange be the hour when all the forest move and every tree stand still. A Trojan Horse within the citadel.