I went to BAM yesterday to see Ian McKellen in King Lear—wow!—and before the play one of my friends spotted Lee Bollinger sitting down (fourth row, center). That takes some chutzpah, I thought. Going to Lear the day before Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s controversial speech on your campus.

The Wall Street Journal blasts Bollinger today (surprise!) for inviting A-jad, as we will now call him, to Columbia, accusing Bollinger of hypocrisy for banning military recruiting at Columbia while inviting A-jad to speak.

Mr. Bollinger’s position might at least be coherent were he not now invoking the same principles to justify his invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose offenses to gay rights and any other form of human dignity considerably exceed the Pentagon’s. After promising that he would introduce the president “with a series of sharp challenges” — including Iran’s “reported support” for international terrorism — he went on to say that “it is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their expression.“

I have a couple of thoughts about all this. One is that Bollinger really is an eloquent advocate for the First Amendment, and especially these days, I’m glad of that; the country seems to need reminding. Two, given that the White House seems determined to go to war against Iran, this speech actually seems useful. Might as well know all we can before the bombs drop, right? Three, Bollinger’s got some guts—and an ego to boot. One thinks he’s rather enjoying all this.

Finally, it’s interesting to ponder this brouhaha in the context of the idea of the university president and the bully pulpit. Lee Bollinger has, since becoming president of Columbia, probably made himself the most prominent university president in the country. That’s the role that Larry Summers was supposed to occupy, and one that Drew Faust so far shows no intention of competing for.

Would Harvard have been better off had it chosen Lee Bollinger instead of Larry Summers, as it almost did? I don’t know. But it is fascinating to watch Bollinger and wonder what might have been.