Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is welcoming Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the school this week. His defense is the standard liberal, dictator-apologist blather about the need for a free exchange of ideas (except on the "global warming" hoax) and the importance of preserving open forums for even the most extreme ideas (but only for anti-American extremists).

So the head of an fundamentalist Islamic state that has been at war with the United States since 1979, denies the Holocaust while planning for a second, and occupies a role as the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism is granted a megaphone by a respected American university on free speech grounds. Meanwhile, Columbia still prohibits the Reserve Officers Training Corps from having a presence on campus. Ostensibly this is due to opposition to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but of course the military is not allowed its own viewpoint and ROTC students are not allowed to follow their dreams (not at Columbia, at least, they need to go to another university). And the Minutement border protection activist group is also prohibited from speaking on campus.

Just another day in American academia.