Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger’s scathing introduction of Iranian President Ahmadinejad is getting plenty of cheers for its accuracy, not to say its audacity. Others, though, are put off by what they feel was a lack of civility.

Jacob Levy, a political theorist at McGill University, articulates his discomfort, his sense that Bollinger “did exactly the wrong thing. One can refuse to invite. One can invite, and treat courteously, while relying on the general principle that such an invitation does not imply endorsement of the views expressed. But I’m not sure that inviting-and-insulting is the right thing to do.”

Further, Levy wonders if such aggressive pre-emptive remarks might make controversial speakers more likely to decline university invitations in the future: “Such speakers always know they may face student protest, but it is something else to know that you may be introduced with a ten-minute denunciation.”

“Again, no quarrel with a word Bollinger said; and he might have been spectacularly right to say it. But I’m not sure…”