Journalist, Columbia graduate to rip diploma over Iran prez

'Tearing is a sign of mourning,
indeed it is a day of mourning'

If noted journalist and Columbia University alumna Aliza Davidovit walks onto the campus of her alma mater today, it won't be to recall fond memories of her college days – it will be to rip up her diploma from Columbia to protest the appearance of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I once prized my Columbia diploma and degree, and in my career as a journalist I've done much to make my alma mater proud. But today I am very, very ashamed. I have removed my diploma from the wall and if Ahmadinejad speaks, I will tear it in two, " Davidovit told WND.

"In Judaism, tearing is a sign of mourning. And indeed it is a day of mourning – a day when the integrity of freedom died a little."

Davidovit, who earned her master's degree in journalism from Columbia, is a writer, author, journalist and former TV producer. She is currently contributing editor at Lifestyles magazine and specializes in interviewing and writing about the world's most famous and influential people for cover stories. She worked at ABC News "20/20" for six years with Connie Chung and in the ABC News Terrorism/Investigations Unit with John Miller. She was also an associate producer and booker at the Fox News Channel.

(Story continues below)

Today, in an exclusive WND commentary, Davidovit takes Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger to task for using the First Amendment to justify the university's decision to invite Ahmadinejad to speak on campus.

She writes: "Would he, in the name of free speech, advocate inviting pedophiles to speak at PTA meetings so parents could better understand why their kids should not be sent to playgrounds with no pants on.

"Would Columbia invite a world leader to speak who claims black slavery was a myth or who calls for all black people to be "wiped off the map"? The answer is certain. He wouldn't.

"If Bollinger wants his students, as he has said, 'to understand the world as it is and as it might be,' let him take his students on a field trip to the Walter Reid Medical Center where our troops our coming home without limbs and without faces because of Ahmadinejad. Let him bring them to the airports where families welcome home their loved ones in a wooden box. Let him take them to the Holocaust museum where they can view how university students their own age were turned into bars of soap and lampshades."