We have cable TV shows using pornography to attract eyeballs, comedians using profanity to attract ears, and Columbia University using a terrorist to attract, what, minds? All are doing a good job of "pushing the boundaries." Unfortunately, they are pushing them in the wrong direction.

Columbia is hiding its decision to sponsor the Ahmadinejad Show under the blanket of free speech, rationalizing that giving the Islamic supremacist a platform does not mean Columbia agrees with his ideology and his behavior. What a crock. It's not about speech, it's about communication. And what Columbia's decision communicates is that an incumbant President might not sit down with Ahmadinejad lest the meeting increase the importance of the Iranian on the world stage, but the American academic community will.

Ahmadinejad does not come in order to dialogue, he comes in order to preach. He comes to preach in order to go home and brag to his followers there how important he has become, how clever has been to fool the stupid Americans into believing he has come to dialogue. Ahmadinejad is not content, as the 911 terrorists were, to just live in the belly of the beast, he wants demonstrate his bravery by standing on the great beast's nose and spit in the great beast's eyes. And Columbia is happy to oblige by roping the unsuspecting beast, tying it down, and offering the Iranian dictator a leg up onto its nose.

One of my favorite scary movies of all time is the original "Thing," the one in which James Arness (in lifts) plays an alien who, dug out of the ice near his frozen-in flying saucer, and accidentally defrosted by researchers living at the north pole, sets about killing the researchers and hanging them up to feed their dripping blood to its seedlings. The next best scene in the film (the best one is the alien being electrocuted by a few survivors) is when the lead scientist approaches the alien to reason with it, and - wait for it - is subsequently smashed to a bloody pulp. In today's remake of the movie, the part of the foolish scientist is played by Columbia University.