John Wright | Free speech on terrestrial radio

I love it. The folks at Columbia University invite Iran President Mahmood Ahmadinejad to their campus and then show him up for the “petty and cruel dictator” he is. Big kudos must go to university president Lee Bollinger for calling him precisely that to his face, and for the rest of what’s being called his “blistering attack” upon Ahmadinejad today. As the Telegraph reported, “Students were divided between those who thought the invitation surpassed reasonable limits of free speech and those who thought letting him speak underlined the same principle.”I fall into the latter group (and said so before I heard the “blistering attack”). I was happy to see Ahmadinejad being invited to Columbia University: if we’re sure about how terrible a guy is, why not give him the chance to prove it? But I didn’t expect Bollinger to be so blunt this morning, or to see the overwhelmingly negative reaction of even the most liberal of leftists to his visit.Well, good for them.John Wrightjohnwright@softhome.net