Academia once again appears to be out of control.

At the naïve invitation of Erwin Chemerinsky-like professors, the  Dictator of Iran not only is scheduled to speak at the prestigious Columbia University this afternoon, roses will be strewn in his  path. 

The free speech-spouting flower pitchers are the overjoyed Columbia professors, tingling with goosebumps the way  normal people  do  when they land a long-elusive date with their  dream  girl or boy.

Free One-Way Speech

Especially in the five years since President Lee Bollinger moved over from the University of Michigan, Columbia’s conduct has been one of the reasons liberals are difficult for normal persons to embrace. (Republicans and other conservatives have  not been welcome in Columbia  classrooms or forums. You  may  recall last winter’s assault on  the leader of the Minutemen.)  )

Since Mario Savio’s days in Berkeley in 1963,  at the birth of the Free Speech movement, Columbia  has been an international model  for the  most restricted version of said political principle.

It stings the mind to believe that, as the noble scholar Victor Davis Hansen pointed out last week, the  Dictator of  Iran — who denies the  Holocaust and seriously proposes a second one  by vowing to destroy Israel — would be invited to speak on an American college  campus.

A Detail: Conditions Apply

The flaw in this favorite of all arguments by liberals is that the American  principle of free  speech is  based on civility and truth-telling, among other requirements. Conditions apply.  You may not shout in your church. You may not use profanity in your church or your classroom. 

In a duel of one-upsmanship among Columbia profs to see who can make the balmiest statement, John  H. Coatsworth, the dean of Columbia’s  School of  International and Public Affairs, said over the weekend that  if  Hitler were visiting America, he would be vigorously and warmly invited to address Columbia students. The Dean chose Hitler because Nazi  analogies are  a direct path  into the liberal media. The Dean learned that lesson from the Dictator of Iran. Dean Coatsworth, deliberately ramping up the hype, was the key person behind the invitation to  the Dictator.

Killer Lessons?

In Culver  City,  this would be the equivalent  resident dialing  Police Chief Don  Pedersen  and asking him to send the two alleged killers in  recent  Culver  City homicide over to address the monthly meeting of the Ladies Aid Society.

Several aspects of the  Dictator’s appearance today are galling:

First,  that he  was enthusiastically, proudly invited when he  should not be allowed into  this  country; second, that there is scant outcry across America,  except from  the usual  suspects on the  right; third, and  most damning of all, the  Dictator will be presented to the gullible, lefty-softened students at a q-and-a session as one of the  two or three most famous, not notorious, government leaders  on earth.

One Kind of  Dictator

Dictators, you know, come from the right and the left, and those on the left routinely  are  cast as ordinary  fellows just this side of  sainthood. Or haven’t you noticed the reconstruction of Castro as a decent chap over  the last four or five years?

Look closely  at the words Dean  Coatsworth used to justify the  Dictator’s heroic  welcome  today at  Columbia.  How regal Dean  Coatsworth sounds when he invokes the  sacredness of  free  speech.

“Opportunities to hear, challenge and learn from controversial speakers of different views are central to the  education and training of  students for citizenship in a shrinking and still dangerous world.”

Only at  a glance  does this statement seem to be  a valiant defense of the notion  of a traditional American liberal education.



No Courage  Required

Dean Coatsworth looks brave  until you realize how far left of center President Bollinger and  at least  97 percent of the  Columbia faculty  are. When everybody who counts agrees with you, there is  no risk  in  making such  a  foolish, morally unsupportable statement.

Free speech — even if your political interests do not stray beyond the Culver City border — is a gun-guarded, dare-you, one-way street at Columbia and many  other college campuses.  You are guaranteed free speech  — as long as you largely concur with me.

Relative to their liberal colleagues, conservative academics are treated similarly to the  way FDR handled America’s West Coast Japanese population during  World War  II.

The Team  of Erwin and Britney

Take the Britney Spears of law professors. The academically martyred Erwin  Chemerinsky, now America’s best known law prof, has been shopping  himself  to law schools for months, desperately trying to escape from  Duke, where last year he  embarrassed himself by helping to prosecute the innocent lacrosse team players.  But because the professor’s far left philosophy is in sync with most American  newspapers and all but one television network, through his flap with far left U.C. Irvine, he became the new Dreyfus.

On the Right,  the  Sound of  Silence

Please follow me across the aisle, to  the right side. Former  Secretary of  Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been appointed a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover  Institution on another campus that is  a bastion of one-way  free speech,  Stanford University.  Twenty-one hundred faculty  members and  assorted other boobs  and boobettes last week protested Mr.  Rumsfeld’s appointment— I presume  because they  thought their campus was for liberals  only.

If you hear  anything  about this flap, I guarantee the tone will not be close to  the waves of sympathy that washed out of America’s newsrooms for  Mr.  Chemerisnky….

The  New Movie Critic

Finally: