NEW YORK, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- As Columbia University in New York prepares to welcome Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to its campus on Monday afternoon, the news has drawn mixed reactions in the United States, the New York Sun newspaper reported Friday.

    Elected officials and Jewish leaders are urging the university to withdraw its invitation, some students are threatening to boycott the university for a week, and some faculties are calling the event an "embarrassing moment" for the university, but others support the invitation.

    "The idea of Ahmadinejad as an honored guest anywhere in our city is offensive to all New Yorkers," the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, said Thursday in a letter to President of Columbia University Lee Bollinger.

    However, Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the university's right to host the Iranian president. "I think who Columbia invites is up to them and that's what academic institutions do," Bloomberg said at a press conference. "I am not part of the management of Columbia or a student there."

    President Ahmadinejad has been invited by Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to speak and answer questions as part of its World Leaders Forum.

    "A man who is directing the maiming and killing of American troops should not be given an invitation to speak at an American university," Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona who is running for U.S. president, said in a statement.

    The dean of SIPA, John Coatsworth, defended the invitation as an exercise in good citizenship. "Opportunities to hear, challenge, and learn from controversial speakers of different views are central to the education and training of students for citizenship in a shrinking and dangerous world," Coatsworth said in a statement.

    A broad coalition of student groups, including Jewish groups and the college Republicans, were busy Thursday organizing a peaceful rally in the center of the campus for Monday. A petition was also circulating among students with faculty members urging a week-long boycott of classes, the report said.

    Other students said they supported the university's decision to host the Iranian leader. "This wouldn't have happened at any other institutions, (and) the invitation does not represent an endorsement of his views," said a junior history major of the school.

    Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive in the city Sunday to address the United Nations General Assembly.