Free Republic

Columbia University janitors were gripped with “sheer terror” as a mob of violent anti-Israel protesters stormed Hamilton Hall and took over the building on April 30 — armed with hand-drawn floor plans and supply lists, says a longtime custodian for the Ivy League university. As dozens of rioters busted through glass and barricaded the entrances to occupy the historic university building, four janitors found themselves trapped inside and afraid, Henry Clemente, a head custodian for Columbia, told The Post. “If you have masked people running through the building with zip ties and chains, you don’t know what they’re going to...

TORONTO — When Kian Tajbakhsh went before a judge in Tehran on Sunday he had several reasons to think he would be released. Instead, to his utter shock, he was given a 15-year prison term. Since being detained in July, Mr. Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar, had been permitted two home visits, the last on Oct. 15, when he appeared hopeful that he would be released soon, a family member said. He said he had been transferred recently to a villa on the compound of the Evin prison, a sign of leniency that he thought suggested his release was imminent. Mr....

Too bad Dr. Lee Bollinger, who has a law degree, forgot an essential cross-examination principle: Never ask a hostile witness a question you don't already know the answer to. If he'd remembered that bit of courtroom wisdom before he invited Iran's president to Columbia University, perhaps jihadists around the world wouldn't be laughing at America right now. Bollinger is the president of Columbia, which invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a question-and-answer forum on campus this week. The showdown was supposed to expose the Iranian propagandist, but it turned out to be the biggest public relations disaster in the history of American...