Columbia University is under fire for inviting Iranian president Ahmadinejad to speak. Many people and organizations are protesting the appearance of the leader of a country Bush has called part of the axis of evil. Ahmadinejad is accused of building nuclear weapons, aiding terrorists, sending weapons of Iraq and denying the reality of the Holocaust. Despite the protest, President Lee Bollinger of Columbia is keeping the invitation.

At the University of California former Harvard President Lawrence Summers was supposed to speak at a Reagents' meeting. Summers lost his job because of his comments that there maybe biological difference that explain the lack of women in physical sciences. As a result of some protests, particularly from the UC Davis campus, that invitation was rescinded.

In my view both should be allowed to speak. I don't think that students or faculty learn much if they just listen to people with the same views as them. Let Ahmadinejad stand up there and take questions about his views. I doubt that he will act like a neo-nazi and start shouting death to America and Israel. And if he does it will only make him look like an idiot to the whole world. By not allowing him to speak you just make a ideological martyr of him. By listening to your enemy you may learn something that will be helpful later. We should not be afraid of showing the freedoms we have in this country. Hurray to Bollinger for taking his stand.

A big boo to the UC Regents. They caved in to political pressure. The whole Summers incidence at Harvard shows that there is only academic freedom for the politically correct. Summers offered a theory which has NEVER been proven right or wrong. But the liberal nazis would not engage in rational discussion. This is like the ancient times where people thought that the sun revolved around the earth. Even though it was never proven, anyone who disagrees with that was attacked. Summers may well be wrong but he can't even bring that up for discussion? How many times in history have someone bring up a theory that was wrong? He was not going to the UC to discuss this topic anyway. The UC Regents are bunch of wimps to cave in.

It is interesting that the liberals would be more likely to back Columbia than conservatives. As a result Columbia can use academic freedom to allow Ahmadinejad to speak. But since liberals run the UC any politically incorrect views are scorned. In this case a person who had a politically incorrect view is not even allowed to speak on another topic! So to the liberals the former President of Harvard is a more controversal and dangerous speaker than someone who had called for the destruction of Israel and may very well have helped terrorists against the U.S. You have to wonder what are they teaching on our campuses today. Or what is it that they are smoking!

Watched parts of the Emmys the other night. I was wondering why Ray Romano and Sally Field got censored. Still don't know what Romano said but Sally Field apparently made a short speech against the war and included the words "goddamn war". It doesn't seem that outrageous compared to past political speeches at award shows. It does not seem to warren censorship in a supposedly free country. Now most of the time people who make these types of speeches really don't help their causes. I mean it usually is a big ramble that would not convince anyone that is not on your side to change his mind. Field, for example, sounded confuse and said that if women ran the countries there would be no wars. That is nonsense. Didn't Golda Meir fought the Arabs? I am sure Margaret Thacher would not hesitate to fight a war. Sometimes wars are necessary. We just should not fight those that are not necessary.

Also read in Time magazine that Kathy Griffin was censored when she accepted a creative-arts Emmy, telecasted on E!. Of course nobody watched that. I didn't even know there was such a channel! She said "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award but no one had less to do with this award than Jesus". The Catholic League condemned the remarks and got it edited out of the broadcast. It is absurd that people thank God when they win an award or score a touchdown. The true God would careless about who won an Emmy or the Super Bowl. Now I am sure Kathy Griffin would not have gone to Tehran and told the Iranian basketball team, which had recently won the Asian championship that "Allah really has nothing to do with this unless He told China not to send Yao Ming and the rest of the "A" team to the tournament". If she had said that in Tehran she would probably be beheaded. We didn't go that far here but by censoring her, we are moving a little closer to Iran.

The truth is that these people who make political statements at awards make themselves look silly. But at the same time, people who censor them look silly also and even help spread their messages. Everybody wondered what Sally Field had said and looked for it in the papers the next day. If they had heard it on t.v. they would have not paid any attention at all. Kathy Griffin's comments would not have been heard by anyone since nobody watches E! anyway. But by getting censored, her message is in Time and other media. It is like protesting a book or movie, it just helps the sales.

A new tape of bin Laden came out yesterday. For a man who doesn't like the U.S. he appears to have gone Hollywood. What is with the dark beard? I am no expert but I don't think once you have almost totally grey hair that you can miracously turn back to dark hair. He must have seen the Walt Frazier and Keith Hernandez commercials. I wonder what he thinks of corporations that sell hair dyes.

One thing that is interesting to me about the speech is that he mentioned that Americans should read the book by Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit. I have not read the book myself but I have heard that Scheuer denounces the U.S. leaders being untruthful in the war on terrorism. It is not hard to figure out what is probably said in the book. The U.S. leaders, not just Bush but most of the Congress as well, consistently framed the war as terrorists against democracy, freedom, and our way of living. This may arouse nationalism but does not help us to fight terrorism in the long run. If people like bin Laden were to ask for jihad against democracy and freedom, do you think that they would get many people to sign up? Who is going to blow himself up because other people's women are wearing bikinis? Evil people are able to recruit others to do their dirty work only if our policies are truly or perceived to be evil.

So how does Bush respond to the video? He says that proves Iraq is part of the war against al qaeda! Nevermind that al Qaeda was not in Iraq before the war! It is always just rhetoric and no real understanding of the world. Bin Laden is not sincere when he says the policies of the U.S. is main the reason behind the attacks. He is just using rhetoric. But so is our president not being truthful when he links Iraq with bin Laden. Bush does not understand that while there are evil people who are against us, he makes it easier for these people to fill their ranks by the poor policies that he has initiated.