NEW YORK -- Its proponents, including Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and the Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, contended that having Iranian Dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak on campus would be a big step in the direction of mutual understanding.

Instead, Bollinger and Columbia University stepped into a black hole of shame, from which there is no escape.

What has the passage of a year wrought?

Only a better understanding of just how misguided Bollinger, John H. Coatsworth (the SIPA Dean), Richard W. Bulliet (the professor who initiated the A-Jad invitation) and the entire Columbia University Board of Trustees were.

Columbia University was played to the max by Ahmadinejad, who basked in the credibility his appearance provided for his gay-bashing, women-stoning, anti-American, destroy-Israel agenda. Bollinger and Columbia University have been accessories to every action of A-Jad since September 24, 2007. And, Bollinger and Columbia University will go down in history as having been duped by one of the 21^st Century's most evil leaders.

What else has time revealed about the 2007 A-Jad speech at Columbia? Like a politician who serves his or her entire career with distinction, and then is caught in a lurid scandal, Columbia’s biographers and obituary writers will forever associate the school with a man who openly calls for Holocaust II against the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

We strongly suspect that Columbia has paid a financial price, as well, for its embrace of A-Jad. We know alumni donors who’ve cut or eliminated their contributions to the school in the wake of the September 24^th blasphemy. And really, there is no way to know which major domo donors who might have once considered a major gift to Columbia have reconsidered.

One year later A-Jad and his hate-filled regime are stronger and more menacing than ever. As for Bollinger, Coatsworth, Bulliet and the other vermin who disgraced themselves and their university, we see no signs that they’ve managed to redeem their tarnished reputations even an iota.

In Jewish tradition, one remembers those who have died each year on the anniversary of their deaths by saying a special Yizkor prayer and lighting a candle. This September 24^th, many Columbia University alumni and friends of the school will be lighting a candle for Columbia University to commemorate the day its morality perished.