Melanie Phillips weighs in:
These ‘offensive’ remarks consisted of Bollinger telling Ahamdiejad home truths about his regime when the Iranian leader was — disgracefully — invited to speak at Columbia last year. Bollinger’s remarks were intended to lance the boil of that invitation. This was a wholly inadequate initiative since the invitation itself, which should never have been proferred, was a propaganda coup for Ahmadinejad, for whom it helped cement his power over the people of Iran — including these unfortunate students. Not content with that, a bunch of Columbia academics now intends to grovel for forgiveness for speaking truth to tyranny.
