The Bronx cheer: Columbia University welcomes Iran's president

We were alternately proud and dismayed by the way Columbia University treated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Proud that, in the name of free speech and unbridled academic inquiry, an American university would invite the president of a nation that President George Bush has labeled part of the "axis of evil" to speak. Dismayed that, because of criticism of that decision by Jewish activists, the university's president would find it politically necessary to insult his guest while introducing him.
Make no mistake. Ahmadinejad represents a regime that is hostile to the United States. We take at face value reports by the U.S. government that Iran is arming, training and advising militia forces in Iraq that have killed American troops.
We also are troubled that Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier, that he will not acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist, and that his nation is fighting a proxy war against Israel through its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That sponsorship is one reason why Iran's nuclear aspirations are frightening.
But we also share the Iraq Study Group's belief that if the United States is to extricate itself from Iraq and create a more peaceful and stable Middle East, the United States must talk to its enemies there. Iran and Syria are at the top of that list.