Looks like the Iranian president himself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be speaking at Columbia this Friday, the Spectator reports. Gotta love that First Amendment, huh? If his remarks at the United Nations yesterday were any indication, he plans a rousing disquisition on how the Holocaust never happened. (You wanna handle this one, Mazower?) No word yet on whether the president's popped collar (see above) will make an appearance.

But here's the weirdest part: Columbia President Lee Bollinger doesn't seem to know who invited him! "I happen to find many of President Ahmadinejad's stated beliefs to be repugnant, a view that I'm sure is widely shared within our university community," Bollinger told Spec.

Bollinger also said he wasn't sure the university could accomodate him on such short notice. Gotta love them First Amendment loopholes, huh?

UPDATE 8:48 a.m.: A new version of the story says the dean of the international relations school sent the invite, apparently without consulting her boss. Love it!

Is Charles Nesson the William Shatner of academia? No one's really sure why he's still around, but we dare not question it. Nesson's greatest hits are too many to detail here: Just know that the man they called "Billion Dollar Charlie" in A Civil Action, who boasted to students that he always smoked reefer before teaching, who once built a class around the O.J. Simpson case so successful Judge Ito asked his students for legal briefs ... this man may have finally topped himself.

Nesson's latest idea is so batshit insane, it just might work. He's teaching a class through Second Life, the online 3-D social universe in which desperate people interact with other desperate people. (Which means, by definition, most law students already have accounts.) It's like The Sims, but with moot court and office hours.

Here's the genius promo video for the class. Note (as if they're possible to miss) Nesson's CHiPs-style motorcycle entrance, the absolutely stunning Christopher Walken speech patterns, and the fact that he's lopped a minimum 40 years of aging off his digital persona. Daughter Rebecca Nesson makes an appearance as a butterfly -- Jesus, just watch: