The pros and cons of Bollinger’s allowing Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia have been rehearsed, as well as differing views on Bollinger’s confrontational opening remarks . I don’t want to get into that, but just to say that I heard his remarks on C-Span over the weekend, and they were followed by a rousing round of applause and I think some cheers. So whatever you think of the whole thing, given that it did take place, given that Bollinger spoke as he did, even given that you might think Bollinger and students shouldn’t have shown such disdain for an invited guest–that applause does indicate that a lot of students at Columbia were ready to welcome a denunciation of Amad’s noxious views.