JON CARROLL

As you may have heard, Donald Rumsfeld has been offered a one- year appointment as the Special Distinguished Visiting Something at the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank affiliated with Stanford University in a way not clear to me or, apparently, anyone else.

The online petition opposing his appointment has been signed by more than 2,600 "members of the Stanford community," another fuzzy designation. The reaction of the Hoover Institution to the online petition has been a hearty laugh and another round for the table. It has never cared about the opinions of the Stanford community in the past, and it is not about to start now. A nicer way to say this is that the Hoover Institution is an independent and resolute sanctuary for beleaguered scholars.

This latest controversy is being played as yet another silly "political correctness" controversy. The usual Fox News-ready conservative commentators have trotted out the arguments about how colleges celebrate diversity but really demand strict intellectual conformity. Liberals? They're in control. Conservatives can do nothing except withhold endowments, join think tanks and work for lobbying firms, whereas powerful liberals can be tenured English professors.

Think of the children.

Which is not to say that silly stuff is absent from the halls of academe. Academic politics are fierce, and cliques scheme to take over departments and impose one or another loony world view on their colleagues. But universities exist to protect silly ideas and to experiment with new ways of teaching. A lot of silly ideas are just ridiculous extensions of smart and useful concepts.

It may be that teaching world history from the Inuit point of view leaves out some important events. On the other hand, 50 years ago the existence of the Inuits was not even noted except in certain obscure anthropology seminars. So colleges do course corrections (unintentional pun, but I like it) and the learning experience is enriched thereby.

But all of this is beside the point. Donald Rumsfeld is not some guy who opposes sex education in schools, or believes that abortion should be illegal, or thinks that women should just stay home and make babies. He's a guy who ordered bombing runs on helpless civilians. He's a guy who sent American soldiers to their death. He's a guy who displaced 2 million Iraqi citizens. If the phrase "war criminal" means anything any more, then Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal.

All war involves senseless slaughter, but that slaughter is often in defense of a comprehensible goal. If someone attacks you, you attack back. That's why the initial war in Afghanistan was a good idea. (Now the war in Afghanistan is underfunded and ignored - another Rumsfeld legacy.) But the war in Iraq had no comprehensible rationale. The rationales presented turned out to be exaggerations or lies. The prosecution of the war was carried out according to Rumsfeld theories about the utility of small armies, and those theories were not changed even as the death toll mounted.

Rumsfeld never let the facts interfere with his grand visions. Even when he resigned, he exhibited no remorse. Now other people, better people, will be left to sort out the grotesque mess he left, and America will carry the burden of his stupid invasion for the next 50 years. If he's not the worst person in the world, he's in the top 10.

The only comparable example in recent days is Columbia University's decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. I hold no brief for Ahmadinejad, but he is the ruler of a strategically important nation and it might be useful to hear what he has to say. It might be useful to tell him a little bit about what we think. It might even be useful to try to reach an accommodation with him, in the same way that we are trying to reach an accommodation with Kim Jong Il.

Besides, if he hadn't been allowed to speak, we would never have learned that there are no gay people in Iran.

Donald Rumsfeld is no longer the leader of anything. Of the abundant evidence, he will neither say anything interesting nor listen to opposing opinions. There is no necessity to be polite to Donald Rumsfeld.

Indeed, I think that Donald Rumsfeld should be shunned. I think people should turn their faces away from him when he comes near. I think people should avoid him on the street. I think people who come into accidental contact with him should say, "I shun thee." He deserves social discomfort; he deserves to realize that actions have consequences, and that the hermetic world inside the Bush administration is not the only world in the world.