| Sometimes, college and university administrators invite tyrants, terrorists, and other highly controversial people to speak at their schools. The guest arrives and is given a friendly welcome. The speech is made, several hostile questions are taken from a few protesting students in attendance, and the forum concludes. The school is often used as a venue to legitimize the propaganda by the guest speaker. The school administrators retire to have their cocktails with a huge degree of self-satisfaction. They believe they are courageous. They believe that they have furthered the cause of free speech.
In the last week, critics of Columbia University feared that the same thing was about to occur with the school’s invitation to speak afforded to Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia University on September 24, 2007.
In the days leading up to the speech, Columbia University students, faculty, and Jewish groups protested Ahmadinejad’s appearance. New York state and city lawmakers began to pressure Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to cancel the speech by threatening to withhold public funds from the school as a way to protest the decision to invite the leader to the campus. The controversy intensified when the acting Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, John Coatsworth, said in a television interview that it would have been proper for Columbia University to extend a speaking invitation to Hitler in 1939.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger refused to cancel the scheduled speech of the Iranian President. He said that in order to fulfill Columbia's mission, he must respect the rights of faculty and Deans to "create programming for academic purposes." “On occasion,” he continued, “ this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.”
The stage of the controversy was set on the morning of September 24, 2007 when the New York Daily News featured the headline “ The Evil Has Landed” referring to Ahmadinejad’s arrival in New York city the previous day.
At the evening event, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger spoke first. His speech hammered the Iranian President. He spoke of the country’s abuse of human rights, free speech, and gay rights. Bollinger quoted Ahmadinejad’s questioning of the Holocaust, the threats against Israel, and called him a “petty and cruel dictator.” He criticized Iraq’s involvement in Iran, Iran’s involvement with terrorist organizations, and its developing nuclear program.
It soon became apparent that this event was going to exhibit balanced free speech and not a politically correct, sanitized version. Columbia’s students reacted to their President’s speech with wild cheers as the Iranian President looked passively on.
When Ahmadinjad began to speak, he looked confused. He clearly was not expecting the confrontation by Columbia University’s President. He thought this was another friendly venue to spread his anti-Semitic propaganda.
During the question and answer session that followed, Ahmadinejad responses to questions were jeered and laughed at by students and when he was asked about a recent execution of two gay men in his country, he responded, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I do not know who has told you we have it."
Iran has been closing websites critical of the Iranian President throughout 2007. The BBC Persian operation has now been completely filtered inside of Iran. Therefore, it is not surprising that the state controlled Iranian News Agency reported the event at Columbia University as follows :( Iranian News Agency) “Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon. On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President, was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world. He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.
Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians' resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement. The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises. At the end of his address President Ahmadinejad answered the students' questions on such issues as Israel, Palestine, Iran's nuclear program, the status of women in Iran and a number of other matters.”
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger acted in three different capacities on September 24, 2007. He was a teacher of the value and proper balance of free speech. He acted as a university president by exhibiting the leadership to forcefully address the issues sponsored by the school’s invited guest speaker. Finally, he was a spokesman for the world in his eloquent discourse to the Iranian President of the irrationality of many of Ahmadinejad’s statements and beliefs.
The puzzling question is why Columbia University invited Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of their Distinguished Guest Lecture Program in the first place. Ahmadinejad is hardly distinguished and he was never really treated by Columbia University as its guest.
http://www.eworldvu.com
|
