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Ahmadinejad at Columbia
I was very proud to be a Columbian today.
Ever since it was announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would speak at Columbia there has been almost universal condemnation of the university and its president Lee Bollinger for “giving a platform” to the dwarvish miscreant. Even people like Andrew Sullivan, who has been calling for aggressive political confrontation with Islamo-fascism since 9/11, [dismisses] the event as another lefty sop to anti-Americanism:
I take a very broad view of free speech rights in America, but I would never have invited a dictator and religious extremist like Ahmadinejad. So far, it seems his usual blend of glibness, guile and gall is exposing him to ridicule as it should. If there are no gays in his country, why is he hanging so many of them? But I wonder: would Columbia ever invite a right-wing extremist with the same views as Ahmadinejad on women, gays, Israel and the Holocaust? Or do you have to be a brown-skinned, terrorist-enabling, nuclear-proliferating, certifiable nut-job to get the invite?
Incredibly lazy thinking. I wonder if the forceful challenge that Lee Bollinger presented his hapless guest with this afternoon causes any of those who forgot that we live in a liberal democracy to recognize how important it is to confront civilly and directly such reactionary evil? Would that such an invitation had been extended to Hitler back in 1933 and his reception been as publicly eviscerating. If nothing else, Ahmadinejad’s public humiliation on a world stage he had sought out precisely to gain political stature surely means that Columbia and its administrators are now considered enemies by the Islamo-fascists and in our “war on terror” that has to count for something.
More pictures I shot around campus after the jump…
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| Media everywhere. |
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| The campus was locked down, you needed a student ID or press pass to enter, so many of the outside protesters had to cluster at the front gates. I figured security would be a little looser on the far side of campus and snuck in there with an old alumni library card. |
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| Columbians doing what they do best — protesting on the steps of Low library. |
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| The speakers for the most part condemned Iranian oppression (this woman read the names of children on Death Row in Iranian prisons) and Bush administration warmongering. I was standing next to a network news reporter and commented that the speeches were fairly even-handed and a good example to the world of how free speech works. She said, “Yes. And it’s beautiful weather for a protest!” |
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| The campus was papered wall-to-wall with flyers and posters. This wall detailed the vicious treatment that gay people suffer in Iran and was punctuated with some of the more horrifying things that Ahmadinejad has said in the past. As I was standing near this waiting to get a glimpse of the arrival of the motorcade I watched an Iranian journalist sit down next to a pretty coed and start hitting on her as she tried to study her notes for a class. He was sitting right in front of this wall and never even saw it. |
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| Lest you worry, the frats were also represented at the event… |
Posted in Politics 09/24/07 | 
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I thought exactly the same thing when I read that Sullivan passage. Lazy thinking. I wondered what kind “right-wing extremist” he would put on a par with the President of Iran, a nation we are in a proxy war with in Iraq currently and which seems to have an interest in rattling some pretty disturbing sabers in our direction. Michelle Malkin? Ann Coulter? I think having “the same views as Ahmadinejad on women, gays, Israel and the Holocaust” is a pretty weak bar to set for this sort of invitation. I’m pretty sure it was his relevence as a world leader whose every action affects us directly that made thee visit worthwhile. And Bollinger’s speech blew me away. Precise, detailed, calm, and devastating. Any doubts I had about this visit from him were dispelled after hearing it.
Comment by Aatom — September 25, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
I know that Mahmood Achmedinajad is a lying, manipulating, criminal, powerless figurehead, and professional asshole.
However, are those the credentials necessary to speak at Columbia? I guess, then, although I am a NY Times #1 bestselling author (3 times) I will never qualify.
Comment by Nov Shmoz ka Pop — October 1, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
Aatom, today in the NYT Stanley Fish castigates Bollinger for, basically, being opinionated. The people commenting are all exercised over a university president being “rude”… to a fundamentalist thug.
Amazing.
Comment by SD — October 1, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Somewhere I read the claim that the Columbia excoriation was quite possibly desired by Ahmadinejad: In the cultures he is most focused on for keeping and expanding his power–Islamic, Arab, Persian–such rude treatment of a guest was the epitome of rudeness, savagery; in short, Bollinger potentially won Muslim sympathy for poor li’l abused Mahmoud and made the Great Satan look, well, even more devilish (and petty, especially Bollinger, as if took real balls to dump on Ahmadinejad–unlike Bollinger instead finagling an invite to meet him at an Iranian university and then dumping on him there, in his face, in his thugocracy?).
Another plausible benefit for Mahmoud was that a prestigious American, Western, uni inviting such a thug was a thumb in the eye of Iranians protesting him, seeking allies against him, suffering under him. If you were a non-existent Iranian gay, a feminist, an anti-government student on a state police wanted list, a real activist in Evin Prison, how would you feel if one of the few countries or institutions you might have hoped for help from extended a welcome to your dictator/thug? Maybe a cynical, “Gee, thanks a lot, Columbia”?
I’m glad Columbia is free to invite him and that anyone, even a foreigner, can rant freely in the US; however, that does not make Columbia’s choice a wise one, for anyone who is interested enough to know who/what Ahmadinejad is already knows he’s a swine in Iran. Why invite him to be one in the US as well?
It’s not quite “equal airtime for Hitler,” a la Jesse Helms’ gripe, but why go out of one’s way to bring such a swine and give him a platform to spew? Sorry, but boo on Columbia for this one.
Comment by Roger Godby — October 23, 2007 @ 8:44 am
Roger,
As for Mahmoud (easier to type than his last name…) having desired the fracas at Columbia, I think you’re giving him way too much credit. He was blindsided alright.
And Columbia isn’t just free to invite unpopular leaders — it’s their responsibility to their students to present the world in all its messy details. Had you been on campus that day and seen the activity, the protests and dialogue it generated you might be more sanguine about the event.
Comment by SD — October 23, 2007 @ 8:22 pm