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John Coatsworth, one of the deans at Columbia University, recently made a breathtaking analogy about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to Columbia, suggesting that if Adolf Hitler were alive today, he too would have the opportunity to speak at the university.

Columbia Confuses Free Speech: The Minutemen vs. Hitler & Ahmadinejad

Churchill must be turning over in his grave. In 1938, Hitler convinced the British prime minister and avowed pacifist Neville Chamberlain that he posed no threat to his neighbors. That’s when Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, and declared “peace in our time”. His efforts were later recognized as complete folly. When Hitler invaded Poland and launched World War II, Chamberlain’s name became forever synonymous with the term “appeaser”.

Some things never change.

If Hitler were alive today, he would still have his Chamberlains, an auditorium full of liberal-minded students and faculty, eager to discuss with him those book-burning allegations, his anti-Semitism, and his annexation of neighboring countries. And throughout this debate, there would of course be no reference to the term “evil, “ because, in the liberals’ world, there is no such thing as right or wrong. There are only differences of opinion.

But today we’re taking about Ahmadinejad, ruler of a contemporary terrorist regime. Why invite him to participate in such an important event, at such a prestigious institution?

Most of the students seem to support his appearance with comments ranging from the sophomoric “I think it’s cool” to the pathetically naïve “we’re supposed to be a bastion of free speech.”

The administrators also invoke the fallacious free speech argument. But considering the students’ violent disruption of last October’s presentation by the Minutemen, and the exclusion from campus of the military ROTC, it’s hard to recognize freedom of expression as a hallmark of that institution. Time and again, Columbia has indeed proven itself to be a bastion, not of free speech, but of anti-military, anti-government liberalism.

As to the invitation, who knows what they were really thinking? Perhaps they see the hosting of a world leader as a coup, a feather in their cap. Or maybe they actually do believe their own arguments, that by bathing Ahmadinejad in the light of democracy, they will expose his malevolence to the world, possibly even force him to acknowledge his evil ways.

Yes, in a free society, political discourse and the open exchange of ideas can indeed resolve many issues, but when hope and optimism cloud our logic and rationale, idealism becomes naiveté. We don’t need an intellectual discussion with this man to understand the threat he poses. His past statements and actions have already shown him to be an enemy of the free world.

Fortunately, nearly 70 years ago, world leaders eventually recognized Hitler’s evil intent and confronted him barely in time to stop him. Ahmadinejad’s cordial welcome by a prestigious university only helps to disguise his malevolence. It will certainly be a coup, not for the university, but for him, lending credibility to a lunatic, and possibly the next Hitler.

The president of the university, Lee Bollinger says he intends to “challenge” Ahmadinejad on a number of his controversial statements. Do the armchair diplomats at Columbia really believe they can accomplish what world leaders have failed to do? Will they convince him to abandon his nuclear ambitions? Will they cajole him into admitting he is supplying arms to terrorist groups that are killing Americans in Iraq and around the world? Will they coax an apology from him for assaulting our embassy and taking our citizens hostage for more than a year?

Bollinger and his team of interrogators will accomplish none of that. There will be no admissions and no apologies. But Ahmadinejad will walk away with a smile on his face and a little prestige. And the students will take with them a warm feeling of reassurance, perhaps even euphoria, convinced that he is a reasonable man, and if the U.S. government just leaves him alone we will have peace in our time.

The writer is a former Senior Special Agent of the U.S. Secret Service and holds a BA in psychology.