Stirring it up

As I walked home from class today, the NYPD were out in force outside Lerner Hall on Broadway. The reason? Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been invited to speak by the Columbia Conservatives Association, and as I write this is probably making his speech right now. Needless to say, in a city as liberal as New York, and moreover at a university like Columbia, this has gone down like a lead balloon, and the otherwise desperately parochial college newspaper, the daily Columbia Spectator, has been covering it in some detail, obviously glad of something actually worthwhile to write about. No doubt the CCA have been patting themselves on the back over a job well done in a calculated attempt to create controversy. It'll be amusing, no doubt, to watch both sides whip themselves into a lather.

He's not the first bigshot; we've had Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan and the Iraqi Prime Minister here to speak at Low Memorial Library in recent months. Like I said, in NYC there's always something going on.