From the Columbia Spectator's Ahmadineblog,
[Lee Bollinger's] first point is about the freedom of scholars and journalists in Iran. “I call on the President today to ensure that Kian will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes,” Bollinger said, before extending a faculty position to Kian, the Iranian scholar with a doctorate at Columbia who is under house arrest in Tehran.
Bollinger is hitting the point home, citing statistics about the relatively high number of scholars, children and journalists jailed.
The money quote:
“Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” Bollinger.On the Holocaust,
Bollinger is grilling Ahmadinejad on the rights of free speech, Holocaust, and Isreal . He asks Ahmadinejad - why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their needs for change? Bollinger then proposed that Bollinger lead a delegation of Columbia professors to Iran to address University’s about free speech.
He then moved on to the denial of the Holocaust. Denial, Bollinger said, of the most documented event in human history “makes you ridiculous … you’re either brazenly provactive or completely uneducated.”
Bollinger then moved on to Israel. He said that with 800 collegagues in Israel, destruction of Israel is a personal offense. “Do you plan on wiping us out too?”
He then asked the President why he funds terrorism, why he is waging a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, and why he will not suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment program, even as sanctions are hurting innocent people.
He finished “I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these question … I expect you to exibit the fanatical mindset.” He finished by saying that he hopes Ahmadinejad is removed from power.
Well done! I believe it was the right decision to allow him to speak on campus and I am especially happy that he is being challenged. Unfortunately, Bollinger's prediction that the Iranian President wouldn't answer the tough questions seems to be true:
In response to the first question,
Whether Ahmadinejad seeks to destroy it. Ahmadinejad said Israel has the right to self-determination.
Coatsworth [the moderator] tells Ahmadinejad he didn’t really answer the question and tells him he needs a one word answer to the question “do you seek the destruction of Israel” Ahmadinejad refuses to give an answer, instead going back to the argument that we need an international solution to Palestine.
wow.
~BT
Update: President Bollinger also sent an email to the members of the Columbia community this morning. (thanks Jason)
It is vitally important for a university to protect the right of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.Columbia Spectator columnist J.D. Porter, via Ivy Gate:
But it should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices.
The great majority of student leaders with whom I met last week affirmed their belief that this event, however controversial, is consistent with the values of academic freedom we share at the center of university life. I fully support, indeed I celebrate, the right to peacefully demonstrate and engage in a dialogue about this event and this speaker, as I understand a wide coalition of our student groups are planning for today. That such a forum and such public criticism of President Ahmadinejad's statements and policies could not safely take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. The kind of freedom that will be on display at Columbia has always been and remains today our nation's most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is the power and example of America at its best.
In general, students seem to be pro-invitation, anti-Ahmadinejad. As far as I know, no one has taken a poll, but that stance shows up pretty consistently in everyone's coverage, and in my own conversations with fellow Columbians.
1 comment:
No I'll be the last to defend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but I think we need to be careful to draw the line between criticisms of Iran's oppressive society and supporting a War with Iran. I think this is a central issue to deal with in the anti-war movement.
I find some of the history of such speakers at Columbia kind of funny. From Louis Proyect,
"In 1933, Hans Luther, the German Ambassador to the United States, was the featured speaker at the Institute of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. As he began to speak, a woman in the audience called out "Why did they burn the homes of exiled professors?" The NY Times reported that an usher and a cop pounced on her at the same time and dragged her out. Another two protestors were subsequently emoved from the audience. After Luther finished his remarks, Russell Potter, the head of the institute, denounced them as ill-mannered children."
More recently, in 2005 Pervez Musharraf spoke at Columbia, and according to Jayati Vora (from The Nation),
"On each of our seats was a pamphlet with a brief history of the leader. I was astonished to find that, according to his biography, Musharraf "assumed the office of chief executive of Pakistan in October 1999." There was no mention of the coup through which Musharraf seized power. Not once did Bollinger refer to the military man, who had overthrown the elected government and then refused to hold elections as promised, as a dictator"
Neil
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