Minutmen

Only one year ago, Columbia’s ‘”fascist liberal anarchists” undertook their crusade against free speech, storming and occupying the stage from which Jim Gilchrist and his Minutemen comrades were simply presenting their ideas. Just last week, Columbia University proved negligent in its decision to bring in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak, granting this bigot and his ideas a legitimizing Columbia University podium which would result in disastrous consequences.

Wednesday had that eerie, out-of-this world feeling that can only be the stuff of protests.

Those of us who were even semi-awake last fall remember the last time Jim Gilchrist and the Minuteman Project came to campus. Promised the kind of provocative conservative voice that would enhance on-campus debate and intellectual inquiry about immigration, we got instead a brawl that pitted student activists against the Minutemen and stirred a media blitz that had every news outlet from Fox News to New York Times decrying Columbia University as intolerant and hostile to ideological diversity.