Morningside in America: don't bother us with war; we're protesting homophobia.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- "It's him!" shouted one pedestrian, pointing at the video screens in the FoxNews truck, "The Iranian dude!"

That dude was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, the subject of screaming headlines in New York's tabloids ("The Evil Has Landed!"), and the man at the center of a heated national debate about free speech, campus politics, and U.S. foreign policy.

A dozen New Yorkers, locked out of Columbia's normally open campus, were lined up along the side of the truck. Hoping to hear Ahmadinejad say something provocative, or crazy, something against Bush, or something that might start another war, they leaned in to listen.

"The reality of purity of spirit and good behavior, knowledge and wisdom is pure and clear reality," said the diminutive head of the Islamic Republic.

"Booor-ing!" sang a short blond man as he exited the scrum. A producer echoed his judgment: "No one's going to watch this. It's like reading the Unabomber letters." New York is a tough crowd.

But before Fox cut away, Ahmadinejad cast himself as a defender of Palestinians against "60 years of conflict and terror" (some applause) and European scholars with "different perspectives" on the Holocaust (silence). Soon he would announce, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. ... I don't know who's told you that we have it" (laughter). The broadcast was saved!

Outside the locked-down campus, protestors lifted up signs: "Hitler Lives" with a cartoon of Ahmadinejad's limbs forming a swastika. The student body of Rambam Mesivta yeshiva, bussed in for the occasion, carried posters saying "Ahmadinejad is Not Welcome" or demanding that the U.S. "Stop Iran from Going Nuclear." Pro-war conservative Michelle Malkin stood with a group that included rabbis, Iranian Americans, and a few teenagers wearing rightwing t-shirts, all warning the pedestrians about the evil in their midst.

After the speech, members of Columbia's Hillel chapter gathered outside the auditorium and organized themselves to give quotes to the dozens of media members, some in fluent Spanish. One told me that she had no problem with Ahmadinejad speaking in America, "but I don't have to welcome him into my own home. Columbia is my home." The Jewish campus group wore black t-shirts that read, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke rarely gets this much love at Columbia.

Inside the campus, a carnival of political speech organized by the Columbia Coalition picked up. Noah Baron, a freshman member of SDS, approached a podium for student speakers on the stairs facing the quad. "Ahmadinejad's rise is a backlash against our policies, for our support for Iran's previous regime, and for our war in Iraq," he said to healthy applause. With his plea to "keep faith with Iraqi civilians and American soldiers" and his button-down shirt, he perfectly played the role of a firm but non-fanatical man of the Left.

In the center of the square, a more ragged and radical group of A.N.S.W.E.R. members held up a banner declaring "Ahmadinejad=Bad, Bush=Worse." A young woman in a ripped orange t-shirt screamed herself hoarse: "Which country is neck deep in the blood of Iraqis?" The firebrand implored, "Refuse to choose between McWorld and jihad," before demanding the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Columbia's radical reputation goes back to 1968 when students occupied Hamilton Hall and four other buildings for a week after smashing a wall around the gym. The students went on strike and demanded that Columbia be democratized. They were eventually arrested, but many went on to riot at the Democratic Convention that year, and some helped form the Weather Underground.

While nothing in the university's history has since measured up to that disturbance, Columbia remains a redoubt of young leftists. Last year, when the founder of the Minutemen, Jim Gilchrist, spoke at the invitation of Columbia's College Republicans, students rushed the stage, chased him away and unfurled a banner that read, "No one is ever illegal" in English and Arabic.

The treatment students gave Gilchrist was grist for the conservative media mill in the days leading up to Ahmadinejad's appearance. columnist David Limbaugh fumed, "liberal academia's simulated love affair with the First Amendment and so-called tolerance for diverse viewpoints just goes one way."

But on the steps of the administration building, one grungy revolutionary thought the offense went the other way, that the administration was appeasing the right wing. He denounced Columbia President Lee Bollinger's decision to publicly challenge the president of Iran, "Where was the promise of forceful criticism of Jim Gilchrist?" His conclusion that the administration was bent on "privileging Zionist priorities over those of Columbia's Latino community" was met with boos and cheers. But to prove he's no stooge of foreign dictators, he stated, "We at Columbia oppose the disgusting sexism and homophobia in Iran." Do they ever.

The campus walls and sidewalks were littered with signs deploring Iran's "official homophobia" and pictures depicting two teenage men hung for their sex crimes. Not one among dozens of student groups and individuals who demonstrated on the administration building steps failed to emphasize their solidarity with Iran's homosexuals. Columbia's panoply of activists, social democrats, Marxists, peaceniks, and defenders of Israel all agreed. Members of the Queer Alliance, read a statement, "President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

Asked to characterize Columbia's political culture, SDS's Baron said that while issues surrounding Israel and Palestine caused the most disagreement, support for homosexual rights "really united the campus. ... I was happy to see even members of Hillel holding up a sign that said 'Misogynist, Racist, Homophobe get off our campus.'"

The world outside the campus brushed aside Ahmadinejad's odd remarks about homosexuals with a dismissive laugh and turned to issues that effect millions, debating the impact of Iran's nuclear weapons development and whether the United States should respond to alleged Iranian interference in the Iraq War by bombing Tehran. But Columbia's leftwing students had actually managed to push questions of war and peace into the background. As long as they could speak up for homosexuals, they wouldn't have to shout at each other.

Ben Berger, a freshman who wore an Israeli flag over his back like a cape, confessed he was "a little disappointed." Looking up at the procession of student speakers he said, "I expected some chanting and marching, something more heated. I guess that's just my perception of '60s Columbia."

That era of riotous dissent is over. Columbia is a safe place now. Even as the Iraq War becomes more unpopular than Vietnam ever was and a drumbeat for war with Iran beats in the distance, the students satisfy themselves by shadowboxing with "homophobes" 10,000 miles away. Vigorous political disagreement is quickly expelled, as in the case of Gilchrist, or drowned out by a flood of sentimentality.

Richard W. Bulliet, the professor of Middle East history who helped arrange Ahmadinejad's visit, called it "the most dramatic 'foreign bad guy on campus' event since '59" when Castro spoke at Harvard. In reality, it was a spectacular stage on which the Iranian president, the conservative media, and the Columbia student body struck self-righteous poses. Booor-ing!