...Mr. Bollinger has called the movement to divest from Israel "grotesque"; if he really believes that, one wonders why he would elevate one of its adherents to the leadership of the university's School of International and Public Affairs.

But it isn't only the Middle East where Mr. Coatsworth is on the far-out fringe; it is also in his academic specialty, Latin America. When the State Department in 2005 denied a visa to a Sandinista leader, Mr. Coatsworth told the Harvard Crimson, "It's just another cost we're all paying for the restrictions on international travel to the United States under the Patriot Act." The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act had passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 1. In 2004, he staged a protest at Las Vegas by putting 65 empty chairs in a conference room after the State Department denied visas to 65 Cuban "scholars." In 1999, he backed a Harvard student petition against the Clinton administration's use of a naval range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

In 2002, he wrote a letter to the Crimson defending the decision to invite a high-ranking Cuban official to Harvard as a professor. "The Cuban government does not practice genocide or start world wars," the letter said. "It prosecutes and harasses some dissenters." Oh, just "some" dissenters?...