Ahmadinejad knew his audience -- the millions who shun liberty and embrace darkness. Those millions are not involved in Holmes' marketplace of ideas. There is a difference between pandering to the lowest common denominator and engaging in fruitful debate. Columbia refused to recognize that difference. Ahmadinejad may have seemed the fool to American eyes, but he looked like a hero to his true audience.
"I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people," Hitler wrote in volume two of "Mein Kampf" in 1927.
Hitler's grasp of public relations was certainly more sophisticated than that of the Columbia administration. So is Ahmadinejad's. The day before Ahmadinejad's Columbia speech, he spoke with the leaders of the terrorist group Hamas, reaffirming his support for their agenda. Speaking to Columbia students masked Ahmadinejad's true agenda -- appealing to his Islamofascist base. Ahmadinejad was tacitly scoffing at the foolish, blustering Americans who threaten war while allowing him free rein at one of their most prestigious centers of learning. Responsibility for Ahmadinejad's PR coup lies with the Columbia administration -- a group of people so self-centered that they believe their repudiation of Ahmadinejad's political program is the final word.