When I picked up Paul Hollander’s new book From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chávez for review I had in mind the visit of then–Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University in 2007. Prior to his appearance there was some pushback from (unnamed ethnic) wealthy alumni, which led President Lee Bollinger, having already extended the invitation, to denounce suddenly (and unexpectedly) the guest while introducing him. In his remarks, the Iranian president did not disappoint: during his oration he checked all the boxes, including the inevitable attempt at Holocaust denial. Afterwards there was some discussion in the media about whether the invitation was appropriate at all. John Coatsworth, the pompous dean of Columbia’s School of International Affairs, rose to defend his school. As he explained to the press, he himself would have had no problem inviting Adolf Hitler to speak at the school “up to 1939.”

This remark fairly took my breath away. In other words, the shutting down in Germany of a free press and independent labor movements, the establishment of concentration camps, the Nuremburg laws which deprived German Jews of their citizenship, the so-called Crystal Night, the forcible end to Austrian independence, the rape of Czechoslovakia—all of these things were nothing to upset the good dean. It was only once Hitler actually went to war that Columbia would feel uncomfortable having the Führer as a guest speaker.

Such is the moral decadence of our clerical class today. And not just today by any means. Indeed,