President Bollinger of Columbia refused to allow ROTC back onto the Columbia University campus in 2003, despite a student vote that ran 2-1 in favor of it, on grounds of U.S. armed forces discrimination against gay people (in the form of “don’t ask, don’t tell”); yet he invites to Columbia now a man whose regime is notorious for hanging gay people. Former President of Iran Khatami defended the Iranian death-penalty law for homosexuality last year at Harvard: he met no protest from the assembled academic audience (!); Human Rights Watch was esp. concerned about the hanging of two gay teenagers in Mashnad in 2005. Paul–You don’t see a contradiction or double standard here as well?

I’m not saying Ahmedinejad should be uninvited: it’s too late for that. But this is another real misstep from a major university.

Why would one not want to hear and, possibly, question the current President of Iran? Does Withywindle fear the interplay; will AME wilt in the face of the erudition and perspicacious insights of Ahmedinijad’s translator?

As far as leftist academia, I thought that academe was the coliseum for intellectual battle? The fact that the lions are winning at the moment should mean that the Christians and other barbarians need to improve their tactics. Or perhaps they have already changed their strategy, deciding to take over cable “news” and talk-show radio in lieu of dominance in academia and the internet blogs.

While this increases the self-confidence and the political power of the feminist faculty at Davis, it constitutes a negative intellectual consequence for Davis in the sense that it will likely chill debate and contrary voices on the campus. Time, maybe you think it will instead ignite opposition on the campus to such faculty ideological excess; if so, you could be right, but I think the odds are the other way.

Where you are really on target about the narcissism involved here, however, is the impact this incident will have *outside* the campus. You are right to call it evidence–and it is evidence of narcissism, yes, but of something darker, a repressive impulse amid certain kinds of faculty in disciplines whose very foundation is overtly ideological. It appears to be the same impulse we see in the awful Kilmer and Caughie essays in Academe. Hence the feminist faculty action at Davis, even if successful long-term in Davis campus politics and culture, will be used politically as a sword outside the university, against the university culture, and against the university itself.

I suspect that the Davis incident will not be forgotten–instead, it will be paired with Columbia University’s prestigious invitation the same week to the anti-semitic monster Ahmedinejad. But, I could be wrong: maybe it will be forgotten. In which case, the negative impact will be felt only at Davis itself.

Tim, I would say, finally, that this incident at Davis did not come out of nowhere. It is not isolated, and you should not be so surprised (“Headslapping”) that it occurred. It is part of a *pattern* of excess. The pattern of behavior among certain kinds of faculty–concentrated in the Humanities–seems pretty clear. The Davis case is evidence that will be seen as confirming a main thesis of KC Johnson’s book about Duke, a book which has become a best seller–a thesis to which you have raised objections as being an over-generalization. How can it not be?

So, please: save your caps-police vigilantism for people who enter comments entirely in caps. Not for those who capitalize one solitary word, for crying out freaking loud.

Regarding the post itself… I really wish that all the institutions that are controlled by right-wing ideologues were subject to the same kind of internal hand wringing that academics bring to the issue of lefty dominance of academe. Do left-wing ideologues control academe? Yeah, probably. For those keeping score, that’s institutions controlled by left ideologues: one. Institutions controlled by right wing ideologues; FREAKING LOTS AND LOTS OF THEM. And, BTW, that run of harsh and uncouth capital letters were very much intended to be interpreted as the inter-web version of shouting. Deal with it.

In conclusion, I would say that academics need not concern themselves with the leftiness of their own instutions until all the right wingers start wringing their hands blue about ALL the insitutions they disproportionately control.