Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

‘Merit at Columbia’
Why stop at Teachers College [Editorial, “Merit at Columbia,” October 12, 2006]? On Wednesday night in a display of cheesy nastiness representing a new low for the once great university (the invitation to President Ahmadinejad was another recent great low), people with tickets were refused entry to a presentation featuring three anti-terrorist speakers: Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Anani, and Hilmer Von Campe.
In what appears to have been an effort to control the political correctness of the audience, Columbia’s Office of the University Chaplain office decided at the last minute that it was not enough for guests to have applied for and received tickets, they also had to be on a special guest list.
Dozens were turned away including a group of about 20, friends of one of the speakers, who had traveled for hours to attend the event.
In light of last week’s violence by students, it undoubtedly makes perfect public safety sense to leave a group of middle aged visitors from Pennsylvania out on the street. This is exactly the type of logic we would expect from a great intellectual powerhouse like Columbia.
MICHAEL CHENKIN
New York, N.Y.