Columbia University disgraced itself this week beyond repair. Defending his decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to his campus, Columbia's President Lee Bollinger said he would confront the Iranian leader with a series of "sharp challenges" to his "alleged" support for terrorism, genocide, Holocaust denial, involvement in killing American servicemen and women in Iraq and human rights abuses during his speech on Monday.

John Coatsworth, the Dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, expanded on Bollinger's theme of the school's limitless devotion to debate saying, "If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms from which to speak in the United States. If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him." With these blithe little embraces of public debate, Columbia's leaders have destroyed their once august institution of higher learning.

Columbia was rightly condemned from all quarters for its decision to host Ahmadinejad. The hypocrisy of the university which justified its invitation to Ahmadinejad in the name of free speech and then barred protesters who wished to exercise their right of free speech by opposing Ahmadinejad's presence at Columbia from entering the campus has properly been pointed out. So too, the irony of Columbia's decision to roll out the welcome mat for a man who has in recent months closed 15 universities, imprisoned some 3,000 students, hundreds of professors and banned books he claims advance "infidel" values, has been duly noted.

Moreover, Iran's position as the most active state sponsor of international terrorism, its role in directing the war in Iraq, and Ahmadinejad's own suspected role in the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran and the subsequent illegal internment and torture of 51 American hostages held for 444 days has also been reasonably noted by critics of the university's move.

IRAN'S PERSECUTION of homosexuals and its oppression of women - both intensified since Ahmadinejad took office two years ago - have been rightly contrasted with Bollinger's decision in 2005 to maintain Columbia's policy of banning the military's ROTC officer training program from the campus due to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuality.

Some critics of Columbia's decision have placed the university's invitation to Ahmadinejad in the context of the university's longstanding and well-documented animus toward America and toward the State of Israel. This is the same university, they note, that gives tenure to professors who harass pro-American and pro-Israel students who dare to question their classroom rantings. This is the same university that refuses to host people who hold conservative views on issues like immigration.

Finally, opponents of Ahmadinejad's invitation to speak on campus have condemned Bollinger for providing a prestigious platform to a leader who denies the Nazi Holocaust, pledges to carry out a new Holocaust of Jewry, and is seeking the means to carry out this genocide by developing nuclear weapons.

For these actions, Columbia's critics argue, Ahmadinejad should have been denied a platform at Columbia.

WHILE ALL of these criticisms are accurate, many of the actions and hypocrisies they highlight are not unique to Columbia. Indeed, they describe the standard operating procedures in effect on most major American campuses today. Many major universities have given tenure to anti-American and anti-Zionist professors. Many major universities proscribe debate in classrooms and attempt to bar conservative speakers from their campuses.

Many major universities in the US bar ROTC from their campuses and yet act as apologists for regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt that outlaw homosexuality and treat women like chattel. And many major universities give platforms to speakers who represent racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-American and anti-Semitic regimes. Just last year Harvard University invited former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami to address its students and faculty.

To date, with some justification, supporters of Columbia have dismissed or set aside these criticisms of the university as partisan criticism in legitimate policy debates. In their view, Columbia, like other universities, has a perfect right to advance a far-Left world view. It is the job of the university's critics, including alumni and students, to seek to influence the school's behavior by selective contributions or by inviting conservative speakers to give lectures on campus. Both Columbia's detractors and defenders basically agreed that Columbia's position and criticism of its position are part and parcel of the workings of a functioning institution and of a functioning democratic society.

But Columbia's decision to host Ahmadinejad on campus was not of a piece with its previous moves. The problem with the decision was not that it exposed Bollinger and his colleagues as hypocrites. Nor was the principle issue their obvious left-wing political bias. Whether or not Ahmadinejad, who denies the Nazi Holocaust and is gunning for a new one has a right to express his views is similarly not the main issue raised by their move.

THE PROBLEM with Columbia's action, the reason that there can be no moral justification for the university's decision, is because by inviting Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia has made the pros and cons of genocide a legitimate subject for debate. By asking Ahmadinejad challenging questions, Bollinger has reduced the right of the Jewish people to live to a question of preferences.

No doubt, Bollinger prefers to see the Jewish people remain alive. But this is beside the point. The point is that by debating the issue with Ahmadinejad, Bollinger just put the right of the Jewish people to exist on the table.

Here it is important to note Ahmadinejad's uniqueness. It is true that in supporting the annihilation of Israel, Ahmadinejad is no different from his terrorist underlings Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Mashaal and Farouk Kaddoumi. Moreover, Ahmadinejad's desire to wipe the largest concentration of Jews on earth off the map simply because it is Jewish is shared by all of his colleagues in the Iranian regime and most intellectuals and religious leaders in the Arab world.