Is a college campus a place for all views to be aired, or are some public figures too extreme to deserve the platform?

It’s a question numerous colleges have wrestled with, but perhaps none more frequently of late than Columbia University in New York. The topic is front-and-center again over the invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there Monday.

President Lee Bollinger has resisted calls to cancel the event but promised to introduce the talk himself with a series of tough questions on topics including Ahmadinejad’s views on the Holocaust, his call for the destruction of the state of Israel and his government’s alleged support of terrorism.

The university “is committed to confronting ideas – to understand the world as it is and as it might be,” Bollinger said in a statement, emphasizing the invitation implied no endorsement of Ahmadinejad’s opinions.

But Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said giving Ahmadinejad a platform is a betrayal of the persecuted scholars and students in Iran who do not enjoy academic freedom.

“There has to be some standard about who we give credibility to, who we give access to such a prestigious platform as Columbia University,” he said. “What is the message that is sent to the students in his country that have suffered under him?

“This is not a man who ought to be hosted in civilized society,” he added.

Should a university be a kind of public soap box for anyone – or at least any public figure? Or should the university ensure that the imprimatur it gives through speaking invitations reflects general values, like tolerance?

The debate is fairly new, by historical standards. The modern conception of academic freedom is really only a century old at most, as is the transportation technology that can bring people from all over to a college campus.

But the most controversial invitations often don’t please students; they make them angry. In the 1960s there were campus protests over inviting members of the American Nazi Party and radical groups espousing violence. Today the backdrop is often the contentious politics of the post-9/11 Middle East.

Hamilton College in New York canceled a talk by Ward Churchill, who had called 9/11 victims “little Eichmans,” after receiving threats, and essentially rebuilt the campus program that had invited Churchill and former Weather Underground radical Susan Rosenberg to campus. The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater elected to criticize Churchill but honored an invitation to let him speak.

Other controversial speakers have faced opposition less from administrators than from attendees. Right-wing columnist Ann Coulter was hit with a pie during a University of Arizona appearance in 2004.

Free-speech advocates say the chance to call public attention to Ahmadinejad’s views is one of the best arguments for allowing him to speak. Protests are planned at Columbia’s campus and the U.N.