20070919 President Bollinger’s Statement on President Ahmadinejad

Columbia University’s President Bollinger's Statement About President Ahmadinejad's Scheduled Appearance

Hat Tip and thanks to “Mostly on Israel”

Published: Sept. 19, 2007

On Monday, September 24, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is scheduled to appear as a speaker on campus. The event is sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs (see SIPA announcement), which has been in contact with the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. The event will be part of the annual World Leaders Forum, the University-wide initiative intended to further Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues.

In order to have such a University-wide forum, we have insisted that a number of conditions be met, first and foremost that President Ahmadinejad agree to divide his time evenly between delivering remarks and responding to audience questions. I also wanted to be sure the Iranians understood that I would myself introduce the event with a series of sharp challenges to the president on issues including:

the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust;

his public call for the destruction of the State of Israel;

his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops;

Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction;

his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and

his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh (see President Bollinger's prior statement).

I would like to add a few comments on the principles that underlie this event. Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights 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. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.

I would also like to invoke a major theme in the development of freedom of speech as a central value in our society. 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. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

That such a forum could not take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. To commit oneself to a life—and a civil society—prepared to examine critically all ideas arises from a deep faith in the myriad benefits of a long-term process of meeting bad beliefs with better beliefs and hateful words with wiser words. That faith in freedom has always been and remains today our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is America at its best.

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20070921 Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech

Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech

Friday, September 21st, 2007

Perhaps this is a “whatever?” As much as the things that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has to say are anathematic and loathsome, having him speak is quickly reduced to a freedom of speech issue.

However, the context gets muddy when one takes into consideration that Columbia University has developed a reputation for not being tolerant of conservatives making presentations.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger, was quoted in the article to say, “in announcing Ahmadinejad's upcoming appearance, described the event as part of ‘Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.’”

Word on the street indicates that such has historically not been Columbia’s tradition. Rather – it has a tradition of being an inadequate forum for discussion and dialogue as security for conservatives who speak there is so lax that folks avoid the forum.

Columbia’s stated policy is one thing; however, it has proven, de facto, to not be a tolerant or meaningful venue for folks for whom the university appears to be unsympathetic.

In this context, Columbia places itself in an awkward position of being off limits for conservative presenters, yet always willing to go that extra mile for lefty presenters – or in this case, someone who has alleged to be complicit in the deaths of American men and women in uniform.

This of course, lays Columbia open to criticism that it may very well be sympathetic to President Ahmadinejad’s message. And there lies the rub.

Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech: Columbia University said it does not plan to call off a speech by Iran's president despite pressure from critics including the City Council speaker, who said the Ivy League school was providing a forum for "hate-mongering vitriol."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is traveling to New York to address the United Nations' General Assembly. He was scheduled to appear Monday at a question-and-answer session with Columbia faculty and students as part of the school's World Leaders Forum.

The State Department calls Iran a state sponsor of terror, and Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust "a myth" and urged for Israel to be destroyed.

[…]

White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday that Columbia made the decision on inviting Ahmadinejad, "and I don't believe we had any play in it."

"This is a country where people can come and speak their minds," he said, adding, "It would be wonderful if some of the countries that take advantage of that here allowed it for their own citizens there."

[…]

Read the rest of the article here: Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Columbia University were to extend an invitation to all Americans of varying political ideologies the courtesy that it so easily extend to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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On the Net:

Columbia: http://www.columbia.edu/

City Council: http://www.nyccouncil.info/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070921/ap_on_re_us/ahmadinejad_columbia

20070920 Dear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

September 20, 2007 - Dear president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

With all due respect Mr. President; in regard to your most kind offer to visit one of the most holiest places in the United States, “Ground Zero”: in consideration of - among many the dynamics of your various positions and postulations on the contemporary world stage, but in particular, your unique views on the Holocaust.

And – not to mention, your expressed wishes to wipe the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, not to overlook, that you are complicit in supplying arms, soldiers and war materiel to folks who are killing American men and women in uniform, please:

Thank you for your time. And oh, have a nice day.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.)

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