Columbia University announced that on September 24, 2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has actively worked against the US during the Iran hostage crisis right up through his presidency where US troops have been mortally affected by Iran's actions, would speak and participate in a question and answer session with university faculty and students at the University. [The Washington Post has reported that there is a new generation of al-Qaeda, led by Osama's eldest son, Saad bin Laden, 24, who is said to be in Iran along with Saif el-Adel, al-Qaeda's chief of military operations, and Abullah Ahmed Abdullah, al-Qaeda's chief financial officer]. Seventy years before the invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitlers regime.
President Bollinger was probably under critical pressure; so, he resorted to rebuking his guest by calling him a "petty and cruel dictator". Undaunted by the truth, the Iranian press printed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received a standing ovation.
Columbia University closed its doors to the ROTC program. If as President Bollinger states that it is important to be open to all points of view and allow free expression; then why deny students the opportunity which provides individuals with the tools, training and experiences they need to become officers in the U.S. Army?
Columbia University students scrapped plans to hear from the founder of the Minuteman Project - a year after their classmates violently interrupted a speech by the anti-illegal-immigration activist. These disruptive students who shouted down the Minuteman representative threatened to do worse if he came back. President Bollinger never disciplined these students nor accorded the same respect Ahmadinejad received to the Minuteman representative whose organisation tries to keep foreigners, many who are drug dealers and other types of criminals, from crossing our border illegally.
Here are more examples of the American educational zeitgeist:
Dozens of faculty members and students at the New School, in Manhattan, turned their backs and raised signs to protest an appearance by Sen. John McCain at their graduation ceremony in 2006. On a liberal campus, free speech is a theory in the classroom only.
David Horowitz, of FrontPage Magazine, was forced from the stage at Emory University. The booing started when David Horowitz walked on the stage and the interruptions lasted until the talk was cancelled.
Lynne Stewart, the radical lawyer who was convicted of smuggling messages from terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman to his terrorist supporters, was asked to speak at Hofstra Law School, Hempstead, New York on "Legal Ethics: Lawyering on the Edge".
A free concert organised to lift the spirits of the shaken Virginia Tech community after a Virginia Tech student opened fire on students and staff members on campus killing 32 people is instead angering some parents of the victims, who say the decision to feature a New York rapper, Nas, who in one 1999 track chants "Shoot 'em up, just shoot 'em up, what?" followed by whispers of "Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder" shows a blatant lack of respect for the people killed in the April 16, 2007 shooting rampage.
A University of Colorado professor, Ward L. Churchill, wrote an essay comparing World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann.
Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher and former president of the teacher's union, James Buss, was arrested for allegedly posting a comment online praising the Columbine shooters. He wrote that teacher salaries made him sick because they are lazy and work only five hours a day. He praised the teen gunmen who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide in the April 1999 attack at Columbine High School.
Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, became a student at Yale after 9/11. Many Yale alumni and students are concerned that Yale refuses to explain why it honoured Mr. Rahmatullah with a prize perch when countless well-qualified Americans - not to mention other Afghans - would jump at the chance but will never get it.
The editor of Colorado State University's newspaper was only reprimanded after publishing a "Taser this; f--- Bush" editorial. The student editor is an adult; yet, he was treated as though he were a child as the editor of any syndicated newspaper would have been sacked for such behaviour - in the real world. The repercussions resulted in C.S.U. alumni refusing to make further pledges or hire C.S.U. graduates, as well as the loss of $30-50 thousand in advertising resulting in the newspaper staff taking a 10 percent cut in salary.
As a guest speaker for an assembly at Boulder High School in Colorado, UCLA psychology professor Joel Becker had a surprising message of "encouragement": Becker encouraged the students, some as young as 14, to have sex (with men, women, or whatever combination they prefer), to do drugs, and to "please masturbate".
During school hours in an Indianapolis classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse while at least ten students witnessed. Some acted as "look-outs" to prevent discovery. Raymond Park Middle School made no report to the Warren Township School Police who were not aware of the incident.
At the King Middle School in Portland, Maine, medical workers are allowed to give the girls as young as 11 birth control pills without their parents knowing about it even though it is illegal for children under 14 years of age to engage in sex. The school board voted 7-2 to make that happen.
Second-grader, seven-year-old Kyle Walker, was suspended from school for violating the New Jersey district's zero-tolerance policy on guns. He had drawn a stick figure shooting a water pistol. Birth control pills to 11 year old girls - okay. Drawing a gun, not from a holster but on paper - not okay.
The seven chief public school disciplinary problems in 1940, according to Congressional Quarterly, were: talking out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, cutting in line, dress code violations and littering. In 1990 when most professors are liberals, the seven biggest problems were: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery and assault. Seems the status quo is quod libet.