Hail Columbia!

Last Friday Mr. Right was full of contempt for Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, who had dared invite President Ahmadinejad of Iran to speak on his campus. He insinuated that Bollinger had left his former post at the University of Michigan under a cloud, and seemed convinced that the invitation to Ahmadinejad was simple proof of Bollinger's anti-Americanism. Mr. Right's complaints are echoed in depth by this comment from the Wall Street Journal, published before Bollinger tore up the Iranian in his introductory remarks.

Mr. Right was unimpressed when I rehearsed the argument I posted here last week. His dismissal of the notion that a trip to Ground Zero under American supervision could prove instructive to Ahmadinejad, or that it would make this country look good, tended to confirm my suspicion that belligerents like Mr. Right aren't really interested in winning "enemy" hearts and minds. His own opinion that people like Ahmadinejad cannot be persuaded would seem to leave no options beside submission or death. President Bollinger's remarks, and the critical questions of the Columbia students, don't prove that people like Ahmadinejad can be persuaded by reason, but it does prove my other point about the usefulness of engagement. Bollinger was able to denounce the Iranian to his face in language that President Bush would envy, while the students goaded Ahmadinejad into making an ass of himself on the issue of homosexuality.

Bulletin: Jay Leno has just made further mockery of Ahmadinejad by dubbing in Larry Craig's "I'm not gay" disclaimer over footage of the Iranian at Columbia. It's crude, but Ahmadinejad had it coming.

The only thing I would dispute about Bollinger's comments is his characterization of Ahmadinejad as a "dictator." Petty and cruel he seems to be, but so long as Ayatollah Khamenei is the "supreme leader," and so long as the president needs friendly legislators to get things done domestically and has fewer of them than when he started, Ahmadinejad is pretty far from dictatorship. I can't resist saying this -- it's even debatable whether he's more of a dictator than the American "commander in chief," at least in the latter's dreams. In Bollinger's defense, he did say that Ahmadinejad only "showed the tendencies" of a dictator, but an academic ought to be more precise in his language. Overall, he gave an exemplary performance. He didn't threaten the Iranian's sovereignty, but he expressed his opinion and his principles honestly and publicly, and Ahmadinejad had to take it. Bollinger deserves the respect of every American, if only for today.