"War is Peace, Hate is Love"

Let's see if we understand correctly the situation at Columbia University whose dean refers to the speech there today by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Iranian National Socialist (Death to America!) president as "robust debate". This statement follows the prohibition of a speech engagement at that hallowed institution of political correctness higher learning by James Gilchrist, one of the founders of the Minute Man project (to monitor illegal immigration at the U.S. border) and the continued banning of Columbia's ROTC program.

The characterization of the Ahmadinejad invitation as a contribution to "robust debate" would appear to be a good example of orwellian speak given the following restrictions placed on potential protesters:

First, students will not be allowed to bring protest signs into the session on security grounds. What a wonderful way to support free speech -- this mirrors the prohibition at Tehran University where students were arrested for showing signs at one of his speeches.

Second, students at Columbia need to give the University 7 days' notice to hold a protest rally. The administration conveniently gave them only 4 days' notice that Ahmadinejad was coming.

Third, it is unclear whether they will be able to ask questions spontaneously...they will apparently have to submit them in advance (though this isn't confirmed) so the administration can decide which questions get asked.

The dean further advises us that "Adolph Hitler would be welcomed to speak at Columbia were he alive." And all of this BS conforms to the current academic definitions of "free speech" and "robust debate".
Yeah Right.

hat tip: Ed Lasky

Update 9 24 07 2147hrs EDT:

Whenever Lee Bollinger steps down as Columbia's president, some poor fool will toast him for his "stirring" speech today, for speaking truth to power, blah blah blah. Nonsense. President Bollinger gave Ahmadinejad a microphone and a stage and then tried to use the underbilling to redeem his university's sorry complicity in the legitimizing of this fanatic's place in the world. Columbia can black out the backdrop and deliver stern lectures that go unheard in the Islamist world, but it won't remove the stain on its own reputation: It played a role of accessory to many lies today, delivered by a killer of our troops.

Alternative Reality

Mark Steyn, as usual has a hilarious article in the Chicago Sun Times on the mindset of our typical leftist bed wetting set in the Ivy League as it relates to the tragic events at Virginia Tech last week:

[A]t Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.

To further illustrate the goofy mindset of todays academic elite he relates the following true story:

A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.

This would all be amusing except for the fact that real people save for years to send their offspring off to be indoctrinated by these idiots.