At the right is a picture of the space shuttle Columbia breaking up in 2003. Here's the caption that accompanied it: "Debris from the U.S. space shuttle Columbia streaks across the sky over Tyler, Texas. The shuttle broke up as it was returning to Earth in February 2003." As is well known, the astronauts inside died in a ball of fire, 200 thousand feet up in a silent sky. An institution, NASA, has its credibility damaged.

A similar breakup is underway at a renowned Ivy League university. Or maybe a breakdown. It is not of a spacecraft, but of something equally lofty- the institution of free speech on college campuses in the US. I refer, of course, to Columbia University's invitation to Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejhad to speak on its campus. Roger Kimball explains:

Universities are institutions dedicated to the pursuit and transmission of learning and the furtherance of civilization. They are not circuses for the exhibition of politically repugnant grandstanding. Free inquiry is not a license for moral irresponsibility. At a university, as at every other human institution, freedom can thrive only when it is limited by allegiance to certain positive values--the value of historical truth, for example, or the moral truth that human dignity is worth preserving. President Bollinger's sophomoric conception of free speech is precisely the sort of supine intellectualism that, if consistently embraced, would make free speech impossible. President Bollinger primly lectures us that "It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas," etc. But he is quite wrong about that. By providing a madman like Ahmadinejad with a platform at Columbia University, President Bollinger has in effect welcomed him into the community of candid reasoners. He has granted him a patent of legitimacy that no amount of "dialogue and reason" can dissipate. In this case, "listening" is indeed tantamount to an endorsement. It reduces free speech to a species of political capitulation and renders dialogue indistinguishable from a suicide pact.

No image and no caption available for this breakup, nor for the damaged to credibility. And the voices of any that may be dieing can't be heard. At least not yet.