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.
Campus activists were quick to draw parallels to a high-profile case in Jena, Louisiana, where the discovery of three nooses hanging from a tree at the town high school a year ago set black and white students against each other and prompted accusations of racism against the local public prosecutor, who has indicted six black teenagers on felony charges but failed to take action against a single white person.
A major protest against the authorities in Jena two weeks ago attracted national news coverage and appears to have spawned a dozen copy-cat incidents around the country.
One noose was found hanging at the University of Maryland, outside a building housing black activist groups. Another turned up at a school for the deaf on a university campus in Washington. Others appeared in a police locker room on Long Island, at a Pittsburgh bus maintenance depot and at several high schools.
The Columbia episode is perhaps the most provocative of all because of the institution's history and because of a series of recent incidents involving questions of racial hatred and freedom of speech.
A year ago, students stormed a stage where a radical anti-immigration organiser called Jim Gilchrist was speaking, accusing him of racial hatred against Central and South Americans coming over the Mexican border in search of a better future.
Two weeks ago, the university found itself under attack from national politicians because it gave a platform for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the existence of the Holocaust.
Columbia's dean, John Coatsworth, said recently he would have invited Adolf Hitler to speak "if he were willing to engage in debate and a discussion" – a sentiment that sorely tests the limits of tolerance for free speech, especially in a heavily Jewish city like New York.
Columbia showed no inclination towards tolerance of the noose episode, however. The president of Teachers College denounced it as a "hateful act, which violates every Teachers College and societal norm". The university's president, Lee Bollinger, added: "This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us. I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action."
About 150 students held a spontaneous protest rally on Tuesday night and planned another protest and walkout for yesterday afternoon.
Professor Constantine was not answering her phone yesterday and did not appear to have come to campus. One of her colleagues, a social work professor, Derald Wing Sue, told The New York Times she had been knocked sideways by what had happened.
"She's all right at this point with the support of colleagues, friends, students and family," Professor Wing Sue said. "But you can imagine the terrible impact that this has had on her."
Campus protesters characterised the attack as "Jena at Columbia". And the Jena case itself has not disappeared from the news. Following the massive protests, a 17-year-old black boy called Mychal Bell, who had been held without charge for nine months, was at last released on bail. The local prosecutor now says he has given up on his ambition to try Mychal as an adult but intends to refile lesser charges in juvenile court.
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