If there's an Idiots in Academia award, I’d like to nominate Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University.

The professor and university president used poor judgment and a lack of sensitivity when he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus Sept. 24. I’ve been stewing over it ever since. Bollinger continues to receive criticism for his decision.

While Bollinger verbally flogged his “guest” during a lengthy tirade that was supposed to serve as an introduction, he also defended his decision to invite the head of a terrorist state who refuses to adhere to international nuclear weapons verification standards, publicly denies the Holocaust, calls for the destruction of Israel, and is responsible for the deaths and disfigurement of many of our servicemembers in Iraq.    

“This event has nothing whatsoever to do with any ‘rights’ of the speaker,” a bespectacled Bollinger said while standing on stage just a few feet from Ahmadinejad. “But only with our rights to listen and speak.  We do it for ourselves.”  

We do it for ourselves? We might as well give ourselves a migraine and a punch in the gut, too. I don’t need to listen to a leader whose country, according to Human Rights Watch, leads the world in executing children.

If you want “robust debate” as Bollinger calls it, invite Michael Moore and Bill O’Reilly to share a stage.   

Trying to legitimize Ahmadinejad’s visit, Bollinger said: “We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers.”

If Bollinger doesn’t want us to shrink from the world’s threats and dangers perhaps he should spend time with a squad of 20-something-year-old soldiers on patrol in Iraq or better yet, deliver his diatribe to Ahmadinejad on his own turf in Iran, where academics are routinely jailed for speaking out.       

Instead, Bollinger pontificated from the shelter of American academe. I counted nine “free speech” references along with a sprinkling of “academic freedom” “freedom of inquiry” and “tradition of openness” phrases in a transcript of Bollinger’s remarks in support of the Iranian dictator’s presence on campus.

Under the premise of free speech, R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), which trains the nation’s future military leaders, should be allowed on campus. Instead, R.O.T.C. has been banned at Columbia since the Vietnam War. In 2003 a polling of Columbia students found the majority supported lifting the R.O.T.C. ban. But in 2005, Bollinger voted against a university senate body resolution that would have returned R.O.T.C. to campus. So at Columbia, it’s free speech for a dictator killing our troops and no free speech for young Americans who want to honorably serve their country as leaders in the military.

Perhaps most repugnant, was this statement from Bollinger: “Third, to those among us who experience hurt and pain as a result of this day, I say on behalf of all of us we are sorry and wish to do what we can to alleviate it.”

That’s rather hard to swallow. I doubt there is much Bollinger can do to alleviate the suffering of American wives who lost their soldier-husbands to Iranian-funded 240-mm rockets. I doubt there is much Bollinger can do to alleviate the sorrow of families who lost loved ones in the Holocaust. And I doubt there is much Bollinger can do to alleviate the suffering of the jailed scholars and journalists in Iran.

Bollinger ended his remarks with this: “I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you [Ahmadinejad] stand for. I only wish I could do better.”

Well, President Bollinger, I am only a writer, who is also an Army wife, and today I feel the weight of my conscience yearning to express the revulsion at what you’ve done by inviting this terrorist to your university. I only wish you really could have done better.