Why Columbia Invited A Terrorist (Ahmadinejad) To Speak

Jeff Goldstein explains the emotionalizing by Columbia and academic elites. It's certainly not reasoning. There is nothing reasonable about giving this thug a platform of legitimacy. Of course, calling him a terrorist and exterminator wannabe would be judgmental:

Or, to put it another way, Summers’ arguments amount to hate speech within the enlightened paradigm of post-Enlightenment thinking. Whereas Ahmanidinajihadi’s arguments must be viewed through the prism of Islamic fundamentalism, which we cannot presume to understand, and so are in no position to judge.

Well, until we’re willing to strap on a vest and shred some Jews for Allah, that is.

Make you a deal, though: the minute an Islamic fundamentalist criticizes his Islamic fundamentalism, we will construe that as a valid criticism. Before we dismiss it as the criticism of one who, by virtue of that criticism, is no longer an authentic Islamic fundamentalist, and so is no longer granted the kind of authenticity necessary to level a legitimate critique of Islamic fundamentalism.

— Which, if that seems a bit counterintuitive, we can chalk up to a fidelity to western modes of “logic” that require the kind of intellectual consistency that is no longer obligatory under post-Enlightenment paradigms. Because western “logic,” grounded as it is in western assumptions, may not jibe with Islamic fundamentalist logic, which is grounded in competing assumptions that, like our own, are but a function of a particular consensus — no more “right” or “wrong” than our own.

If this seem convoluted, that's kinda the point.