A premier U.S. university invites a controversial international figure to speak on campus. The faculty is outraged. "Speaking truth to power," the professors denounce the legitimacy conferred on a murderous tyrant. That is what largely did not happen yesterday after Columbia welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Morningside Heights. That is, however, what is now happening at Stanford, and the man the faculty views as a tyrant is -- Donald Rumsfeld.

While Columbia President Lee Bollinger opines about "the powers of dialogue and reason," the Stanford faculty has mobilized against the appointment of the former Defense Secretary to a fellowship at the Hoover Institution, a conservative research center affiliated with the Palo Alto university. Mr. Rumsfeld will join a study group exploring terror and ideology in the post-9/11 world.

Mr. Rumsfeld's experience in these matters can't be denied. And though his politics may differ from the professoriate's, this would seem to make his "perspective" more valuable to a university dedicated to the exchange of ideas -- especially one, as its motto has it, where "the wind of freedom blows."

Something else altogether is blowing now. A group of self-described faculty "instigators" calls Mr. Rumsfeld "fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, [and] disinterested enquiry." Their petition has garnered more than 3,000 professor, student and alumni signatures.

English professor Robert Polhemus drafted an unofficial platform for the faculty opposition that calls the Hoover appointment "contemptible" and argues that Mr. Rumsfeld lacks "intellectual and academic experience and/or some measure of achievement." The psychologist Philip Zimbardo tolerantly noted, "They can have any fascist they want there [at Hoover], and they do."

So in the interests of "robust debate," a school is obliged to provide a public forum to the leader of a repressive terrorist regime. But the mere presence of an American with more than three decades of public service -- most recently dedicated to combating such regimes -- is beyond the pale? Stanford's only saving grace so far is that its administration isn't bending to this faculty intimidation.

All ideas are not created equal, and the beliefs of Messrs. Rumsfeld and Ahmadinejad are certainly not. Rather, these two case studies into the academic mindset contrast priorities. They confirm, if more confirmation were needed, that the modern academy's commitment to "intellectual freedom" too often fails to distinguish between those who defend freedom and those who would squash it.

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