The New York Post notes that it’s been over a month-and-a-half since left-wing students at Columbia University launched a near-riot in order to silence a speaker invited by the student College Republicans group:

[W]hat transpired that night is clear: Just as Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal-immigration Minuteman Project, opened his remarks at a campus event sponsored by the college’s Republican Club, thugs bum-rushed the stage and physically attacked the speaker.

Their assault was premeditated. Gilchrist was barely able to utter a word before being hustled away by security.

Apart from some boilerplate rhetoric immediately after the attack, university President Lee Bollinger has had little of substance to say about it.

Despite promises from the university to investigate the incident, so far, nothing has happened:

Since then, not a word of apology has been offered to those whose rights were trampled - nor an ounce of punishment meted out to the offenders.

The only thing, in fact, that Columbia’s administrators have done is to announce an “investigation” - which, of course, they would do.

Beyond that, Columbia’s silent.

* No comment on when the investigation might wrap up.

* No comment on how many students are under investigation.

* No comment on how many face possible expulsion.

Maybe Columbia’s hoping the whole matter will simply go away.

Or perhaps the administration is just too scared to confront its brownshirts.

Shortly after the incident, Lee Bollinger issued a nice-sounding statement:

This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.

Mr. Bollinger was right: this isn’t complicated. There wasn’t much to investigate; the perpetrators were caught on video and could be easily identified by other members of the campus community. The only real question was whether Columbia University had the institutional fortitude to punish people whose crime was shutting down the speech of an ideological minority. Would President Bollinger stand up to the brownshirts, especially when those brownshirts seem to represent so many on campus?

At the time, I was skeptical:

These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.

I’d prefer for my suspicions to be proven wrong. But there’s not much time left for Columbia to stand up for the principles that President Bollinger claims are cherished by the university he leads.

In this case especially, justice delayed is justice denied. As this semester draws to a close, some students will leave campus with their degrees. The school won’t be in a position to punish students once they’ve already graduated. So unless the school is holding its fire until people forget or until any punishment would be moot, Columbia should either announce its findings or a timetable for delivering them. Otherwise, it looks like yet another cover-up at Columbia.