Diplomacy for Dummies at Columbia U.

University presidents used to be among our nation's brightest leaders. Today, they seem to be puppets of boards or regents and alumni groups. The latest example: Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. A few days ago he violated so many rules of management in his introduction of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that it should become a part of coursework for years to come.

First, it's important to note that Bollinger was correct to back his faculty who initially proposed inviting Ahmadinejad to campus. That said, you don't have to be a diplomacy school graduate to know that when you invite a controversial figure to speak to your organization, you don't cave in to your critics so thoroughly that you overcompensate and nuke your guest in the introduction. It's impossible to make Ahmadinejad, through-and-through an anti-Semetic tyrant, a sympathetic figure. But Bollinger came disturbingly close. That was a disservice to the causes Bollinger on some level was trying to promote.

Leaders speaking in public need to know the room, to know their organization. Bollinger knew a Q&A session would follow Ahmadinejad's address. Did Bollinger actually think his students and faculty were going to serve up softballs? He should not have been so bluntly offensive with his questions to Ahmadinejad, anymore than he should have been gracious and solicitous. Simply hand Ahmadinejad over to the audience (rhetorically speaking). All the points that Bollinger made in his ambush would have come out.

Bollinger also committed one of the worst leadership sins by attempting to save his own neck without consideration for how it would effect his university, his country and the world. It appeared to me that Bollinger was more concerned with finding a way back into the good graces of his detractors on the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page who were aghast that he would allow Ahmadinejad to set foot on campus. Now, in some respects, Bollinger looks as out-of-touch and as Ahmadinejad announcing that Iran is a homosexual-free zone. We can only hope the episode doesn't have a lasting effect on diplomacy at home or abroad.