Politics | 08/19/2008 8:25 am
Columbia Accused of Discriminating Against and 'Demonizing' Men

Self-described anti-feminist New York lawyer Roy Den Hollander has sued Columbia University over its women’s studies program he claims "demonizes men," saying it should either be eliminated altogether, or the school should offer a comparative men’s program.
He says the teaching of such programs centers around the idea that men are "the primary cause for most, if not all, the world’s ills."
Also named in the suit is the U.S. Department of Education, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, New York Board of Regents and its Chancellor, New York State education commissioner, and president of the New York State Higher Education Services Corp.
In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Hollander — who, on his MySpace page, calls himself a 100-year-old "civil rights attorney" who brings civil cases to "defend the rights of men against the feminists, feminist allies and feminist opportunists" — complains that Columbia uses federal money to fund a "religionist belief system called feminism." The class-action suit argues that the women’s studies program "demonizes men and exalts women to justify discrimination against men based on collective guilt."
It also accuses state and federal authorities of violating the First Amendment of the Constitution by aiding Columbia, and federal authorities for violating equal protection under the Fifth Amendment by "aiding the intentional discriminatory impact against men."
The New York Times reports that Hollander’s suit says such programs that serve as "a bastion of bigotry against men" at universities nationwide are "spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of the wholesale violation of men’s rights due to ignorance, falsehoods and malice."
Hollander last year filed a suit in federal court that accuses New York City nightclubs of discriminating against men for charging them more admission than women. He also last year filed another federal suit challenging sections of the Violence Against Women Act as unconstitutional for what he describes as its allowing illegal immigrant women to acquire citizenship by falsely accusing their American husbands, or ex-husbands, of mistreatment.























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