Columbia’s Bollinger Tops Time Magazine’s ‘Top 10 Awkward Moments’ List
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Beating Paris Hilton, who served time in jail, and Britney Spears, who delivered what many considered a pitifully lackluster comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, topped Time Magazine’s list of “Top 10 Awkward Moments of 2007” for “adding insult to injury” in his introduction last September of President Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Mr. Bollinger, who delivered to the Iranian a harsh rebuke on campus by calling him a “petty and cruel dictator,” is still suffering from some backlash from professors and students on campus who said his remarks amounted to a set of “schoolyard taunts.”