If Columbia University President Lee Bollinger had a burning desire to expose Columbia students to Islam and the realities of contemporary Iran, then inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak was not the most effective method of exposure.
Ahmadinejad is first and foremost a politician, an extraordinarily shrewd one at that. His goal is not education, but rather propagation of his odious ideas.
Given the two leaders’ divergent goals—one to educate and the other to indoctrinate—it seems odd that President Bollinger extended Ahmadinejad an invite. Why not ask Iranian scholars or journalists to illuminate aspects of Iranian society? Well, SIPA, Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, has done just that. As it says on SIPA’s website:
“Over the course of the 2007-2008 academic year, SIPA will host a lecture series examining the thirty year history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Political leaders, scholars, and human rights activists will be invited to discuss the impact of the Islamic Republic of Iran on international security, peace, human rights, energy, and other critical issues.”
Dandy. I guess inviting Ahmadinejad rounded out the playbill, and had the added benefit of making not only the Columbia President, but also the Iranian President, look good.
The New York Times today sang Bollinger’s praises, singling out how the lawyer and First Amendment scholar “defended the event as in the best tradition of America’s free speech, then freely told Mr. Ahmadinejad: ‘You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.’”
It is true that President Bollinger presented a scathing indictment of the Iranian President, addressing him: “I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions, but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes what you say and do.”
And while it is possible that with these words Bollinger redeemed himself in the eyes of some Columbia alumni and trustees, when Ahmadinejad did finally reach the microphone, he was able to use Bollinger’s insults to his own advantage, morphing himself into the rooted-for underdog.
According to the Times’s live blogging from the Columbia event yesterday,
Mr. Ahmadinejad began: “At the outset, I want to complain a bit about the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of claims…”
The room erupted in applause.
Out of the fray, then, of the critical salvos, Columbia President Lee Bollinger emerges, in the eyes of many, as a strong critic of tyranny, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turns up as an advocate for free expression.
Too bad the event wasn’t billed as a master class in image manipulation.
