Nick Lemann is Columbia's dean. Surprisingly he's rather tickled by Ailes's assault on his institution. "What we teach is how to report the news," he says, leaning back on a sofa. "I don't know if I said to Roger Ailes, 'Roger, go out and cover a story and file by deadline', I don't know if he has that skill set. That's what we teach here. We don't teach liberalism."
If Fox wants to attack Columbia, that's not going to harm the school's reputation, he argues. "Both Roger Ailes and [Fox News presenter] Bill O'Reilly have a special preoccupation with our school and speak of it frequently. It's very good advertising for us. I sometimes think they have a respect for our role in the world that goes beyond the respect that the dreaded liberal media have for us."
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