ON NOVEMBER 12, 70 Columbia university professors issued a “statement of concern” criticizing university president Lee Bollinger’s various failures of leadership, including his handling of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s September 24th speech at Columbia.

Had the faculty rebelled against Bollinger for turning their prestigious university into a podium for a leader of one of the world’s most totalitarian regimes? Not quite. These professors were concerned with a greater threat: Bollinger’s criticism of Ahmadinejad. Their letter stated that Bollinger’s September 24th remarks introducing Ahmadinejad “were not only uncivil and bad pedagogy, they allied the University with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, a position anathema to many in the University community.”