I hate to lecture. I really do. But these kids today. Man, they’re askin’ for it.

I’m t-t-t-talkin’ ‘bout my generation. And, a lot of them s-s-s-s-suck.

They don’t take criticism well from their elders and they’re, like, totally not down with authority figures, so I thought I’d try telling them what idiots they’re making of themselves. Call it peer pressure.

Last week, the Columbia University College Republicans invited Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist to speak on campus. He made it as far as the podium, and about six words into his speech before the school’s Leftists Gone Wild—a cast composed of the Chicano Caucus and, predictably, the school’s Socialist contingent—stormed the stage, chanting over the speech, and inciting a melee, which made speech fairly impossible.

Gilchrist and his fellow Minuteman Marvin Stewart, who had been able to get a few words in edgewise before the riot began, were escorted offstage. The question-and-answer session planned for after the speeches, of course, did not occur. There was no debate. There was no reasoned argument. There was only a thuggish, petulant, childish shout-down of opposing viewpoints by the alleged intellectual lights, the eminently tolerant, the vaunted Ivy-Leaguers, of my generation.

If Columbia University were acting in loco parentis, it’d have the rioters run out in the backyard and pick a switch to get whooped with. Instead, the administration is writing letters to the rioters, and dis-inviting guests for other conservative lectures for fear of the audience reaction.

The Minutemen are controversial. I get that. They raise temperatures. The Minutemen’s efforts to patrol the border and fill in the miles of gaps left by shoddy federal enforcement are regarded as “racist,” “oppressive” and “violent” by many college students.

About a month earlier, another controversial speaker took the podium at another Ivy League school and garnered a much different reaction. Mohammed Khatami, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, spoke to a Harvard audience in September.

I imagine his inability to condemn Holocaust denial could be seen as “racist.” His administration’s closing of 20 reformist newspapers could be interpreted as “oppressive,” and the jailing and executions of student protestors and dissidents has just a whiff of “violence.”

And yet, he evoked something less than the reaction the Minutemen got at Columbia. Let’s compare and contrast—just like we used to do in college!

Student Reaction

Minutemen: We’ve already been over a bit of this, but watch the video. It’s informative. Minuteman Marvin Stewart is also charging that the students who rushed the stage referred to him using the n-word. If true, a classy way to start a solid debate.

Khatami: Let’s check the Harvard Crimson’s account of the speech.

In response to another question, Khatami also justified his country’s use of capital punishment for acts of homosexuality, but said that the conditions for execution are so strict that they are “virtually impossible to meet.”

“Homosexuality is a crime in Islam and crimes are punishable,” Khatami said. “And the fact that a crime could be punished by execution is debatable.”

The audience responded with silence to his remark.

Silence, eh? “Execution is debatable” for homosexuality, and the audience declines to even rustle up a “boo?” And here I thought college campuses were the vanguard of the gay rights movement. But let’s give them another chance. What about terrorist sympathizing?

In his 30-minute address under heavy security, the Muslim cleric also defended the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance movement fighting for the “territorial integrity” of Lebanon.

Khatami, who was president of Iran from 1997 to 2004, was met by angry protestors who called on him to apologize for human rights abuses committed by the government under his watch. Police estimated that 200 protestors gathered outside the Kennedy School of Government.

But inside the forum, Khatami faced a relatively polite audience, a marked contrast to previous controversial visitors.

Hezbollah’s A-okay, but the audience managed to keep its composure. Protestors gathered outside the hall, as is the tradition in appropriate protesting.

Campus Papers:

Minutemen: The Columbia Daily Spectator printed two editorials on the debacle.

“When Protest Fails” condemns the conduct of Columbia students while kinda, sorta excusing their actions:

Continued...