Columbia vs. Columbus (New York Post, October 15, 2009)

How sad and bitterly ironic that the man who forever altered the course of human events with his bold voyages to a terra incognita has now become persona non grata at the Ivy League school bearing his name ("Holidaze for PC Campus Clowns," Andrea Peyser, Oct. 12).

In castigating Columbia University for surreptitiously expunging Christopher Columbus from the calendar, Andrea Peyser exposes the hollowness at the core of academia.

But facts are indeed stubborn things. The pre-Columbian New World was hardly a Garden of Eden. Cannibalism, tribal warfare, human sacrifice and ritual misogyny all have a history.

Columbus was a son of the Italian Renaissance and the creator of the modern age. He remains a true scion of Italy, the land John Milton hailed as "the seat of civilization and the happy domicile of every species of erudition."

Rosario Iaconis
Mineola