Columbia U, Fighting for YOU

In case you missed it, WSJ: Lee Bollinger, Tough Guy.

Previous post: Iran's Calling Card

UPDATE: Via LGF---nothing new for Columbia:

In 1936, the Columbia administration announced it would send a delegate to Nazi Germany to take part in the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg. This, despite the fact that Heidelberg already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a burning of books by Jewish authors. Prof. Arthur Remy, who served as Columbia’s delegate to the Heidelberg event, later remarked that the reception at which chief book-burner Josef Goebbels presided was “very enjoyable.”[snip]

As Prof. Stephen Norwood of the University of Oklahoma has found in his research on the academic community’s response to Hitler in the 1930s, Columbia was not the only prominent U.S. university to behave shamefully with regard to the Nazis. Harvard hosted a visit by Hitler’s foreign press spokesman, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl. American University chancellor Joseph Gray visited and praised Nazi Germany. MIT Dean Harold Lobdell personally tore down posters for a rally against a Nazi warship docked in Boston’s harbor, and MIT participated in a 1937 celebration at the Nazi-controlled University of Goettingen. Yale, Princeton, Bryn Mawr, and others continued student exchanges with Nazi Germany into the late 1930s, and more than twenty U.S. colleges and universities took part in the 1936 Heidelberg event.

But Columbia is unique in one important respect. Its administration alone seems to have learned so little from the mistakes of the 1930s that it is prepared to welcome the leader of yet another antisemitic, terrorist regime.

Nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on video here.

The Uriah Heeps of the West, heaping praise at all cost.

UPDATE: Powerline (also earlier roundup here):

Reader Jon Mudder writes:

As an alumnus of Columbia University , I called the President's office to express my outrage at this invitation. A very polite woman, who directed me to a voice mailbox specially constructed for this event, greeted me.

The voicemail begins with a synopsis of Bollinger's press release and drones on for several minutes. When it's time to leave a message, a pre-recorded voice comes on to inform me that the mailbox is full.

The phone number is 212-854-7328.