Fair and Balanced?

This story has some upsetting coverage of an unfortunate political bias that the Fieldston School, an exclusive private high school in Riverdale, NY is foisting onto their young, impressionable students:

But if Fieldston aspires to the best of university life for its students, it has regrettably also adopted some of the worst aspects of campus culture, a politically correct antagonism toward the Jewish state. Four months ago, Fieldston scheduled a forum on the conflict in the Middle East, lining up two speakers so clearly antagonistic to Israel that the announcement unleashed public outrage, both within the Fieldston community and beyond. A professor at Long Island University, Muhammad Muslih, was to speak in favor of a "two-state solution," while Mazin Qumsiyeh, who once taught genetics at Yale, was to promote a "one-state solution."

That was promoted as "balance." Mr. Qumsiyeh espouses positions so extreme that Fieldston parents and alumni forced the school to pull the plug on the first forum. But there is a clear desire on the part of the Fieldston administration to make sure that their students "get the message." A committee was appointed to schedule a more elaborate and presumably more balanced day-long presentation.

That's not how things turned out.

While pro-Israeli speakers have been recruited, they will only appear in individual panels, not at the main school-wide forum. Two speakers have been recruited for that more important program, professors Tony Judt, who has said that the idea of a Jewish state is a "political anachronism," and Rashid Khalidi, whose support of the Palestinian Arab cause has been well documented.

According to this article in the Jewish Week, the school administration out-and-out refused to place a third, pro-Israel speaker on the panel:

Rabbi Weiss said, “It would be difficult to find two more anti-Israel speakers [than Judt and Khalidi.] I called Fieldston and offered to try and get someone like Ambassador Dennis Ross or Alan Dershowitz or David Makovsky [of The Washington Institute’s Project on the Middle East Peace Process] but John Love, the principal, refused and he wasn’t willing to change things.”

I am fully aware that this type of "balance" goes on every day at universities worldwide. But I would expect that for those who are educating preteens and young teenagers, the responsible action would be to present them all the facts in a truly balanced program, and (gasp!) let them decide on their politics for themselves.

According to the article, some Fieldson alumni have already expressed their displeasure with the way the program is being run, but their complaints do not seem to have registered with the administration.

What's next, Cindy Sheehan vs. Michael Moore as a balanced panel, debating the war in Iraq - for kindergarteners?