ahmadinejad columbia

Columbia University was struggling with damage control a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a controversial appearance on campus.

But at the same time, some who opposed the university's invitation took comfort in the fact that Ahmadinejad came across as the "petty and cruel dictator" he was known to be.

The remarks by university President Lee Bollinger - who also called the Iranian president "ridiculous" and questioned whether he would "have the intellectual courage to answer [these] questions" - seemed to echo larger than the Iranian president's, leaving some to wonder why the university invited him in the first place.

Bollinger defended the university's decision on New York radio on Tuesday, saying "I would be stupefied if anyone in the audience in any way thought plausible what he says about the Holocaust and treatment of Israel."

Bollinger was also pushed to defend his introduction, which some criticized as being too harsh, and others as pandering to outside criticism.

"I think it's extremely important that the full force of one's beliefs and challenges be expressed at an event like this; it's too easy to slip into polite discourse, and the tone and character of the event had to convey this kind of challenge."

Joey Spitz, a first-year student at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, said he absolutely agreed with the decision to host Ahmadinejad.

"If we are truly pluralistic, we need figures we don't agree with to come here as well," said Spitz. "No matter how controversial or how disagreeable, I was proud to see the sincerity the university holds for [the] ethos of pluralism and exchange of ideas."

Spitz praised Bollinger for his introduction, which he said encapsulated who Ahmadinehad was: "A fanatic."

"I don't see much merit in what he said. He seemed to be rambling and quoting biblical texts," said Spitz. "The event was definitely a highlight for so many; people talked about it as the greatest moment of their lives, and it will be talked about for years to come - especially if Ahmadinejad continues to do despicable things."

Spitz said he had been pleasantly surprised to hear Bollinger's introduction: "I felt this was his opportunity to clarify the situation about inviting him."

Bita Badiee, 24, who traveled from Miami to protest against Ahmadinejad outside the UN Tuesday, criticized the decision to invite the Iranian leader to Columbia.

"He comes here and he has the right to say what he wants. But if one student there wants to say what they want, not only are they not given the opportunity, but they're punished," she said.

Another young protester who condemned the Columbia invitation, Ali Kavyani, said simply: "It was an insult to America and Iran."

The press had mixed reactions, with some columnists praising Bollinger for posing a serious challenge and others contending that Bollinger's words had come too late.

"Bollinger totally, and very effectively, trashed the guy in his introduction," wrote Time political columnist Joe Klein. "Bottom line: This sort of freedom always works to our benefit. Those who screeched that an Ahmadinejad appearance would be terrible, a travesty of something or other, seem sort of silly now."

However, Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Daily News, called Bollinger's "surprising verbal smackdown" "too little, too late."

It was clear, he wrote, that Bollinger had "goofed" in inviting the Iranian president to the campus in the first place. "The Columbia prez treated his 'guest' only slightly better than smelly dog-doo on his shoe."

Despite much criticism preceding the event, a Daily News Web poll reported that 57 percent of respondents supported Columbia's inviting Ahmadinejad to the campus.

But some wondered why, with such harsh opening words, the university had even issued the invitation - a question that critics hurled at Bollinger upon first learning of the university's decision.

"What's a little confusing is that after deciding to let the Iranian President speak as a way to promote debate, he nails the guy to the proverbial cross with his searing introduction," wrote Malcolm Friedberg of the Huffington Post.

"On the one hand, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to deserve nothing less for his hateful positions and policies. But if that's the case, then why invite him to speak at all?"

This sentiment was shared by Iranians, who criticized Bollinger's statements as "shameful" and only added to their image of the United States as a bully.

Michael Dorf, a Columbia Law School professor and expert on free speech, has been looking over Bollinger's introductory remarks with a fine-toothed comb.

Reading between the lines, Dorf said it was clear Bollinger would not have invited Ahmadinejad to campus, and he used his introduction to make this clear. "Bollinger did not think it would be a valuable exchange of ideas, but [John] Coatsworth is the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs and can invite whom he chooses."

Despite the fact that Bollinger decided not to intervene with Coatsworth's decision, the invitation was stamped with Columbia University.

"It was seen as a Columbia event, and Bollinger knew he would take the blame for it, so he might as well mitigate the damage clearly, which is what he did in his remarks," said Dorf.

Bollinger's remarks reflected his "awkward position" in having to defend an invitation he didn't issue, said Dorf.

"It wasn't a set up, but it looks like that," said Dorf.

Though Dorf said he would not have invited Ahmadinejad, he thought his presence raised consciousness in the US about exactly what the sins of Ahmadinejad were.

"In that sense, it served a useful function here," said Dorf. "But we were not effective at persuading Iran or the world of the case against him by inviting him and then dumping on him."

Hilary Leila Krieger and AP contributed to this report. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a controversial, influential and incendiary figure. As world opinion bears down on Columbia's invitation to Ahmadinejad, Columbia's president Lee Bollinger was quick to use his area of expertise -- freedom of speech -- to defend his decision: "That such a forum could not take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here [...] This is America at its best." And he has a point. Freedom of speech means exactly that -- we do not discriminate against speech simply because it is hateful, unfounded, incorrect, and advocates the destruction of a people or a state. While Michael Ledeen and other hawkish pundits claim that the benefits of engagement are a "myth", I feel that engagement without appeasement is the only way to peacefully resolve our differences.

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Yet, their side of that argument also holds water. We are giving Ahmadinejad a platform from which to preach his ignominious and repulsive rhetoric. We legitimize statements calling for the destruction of Israel, denying the Holocaust, and the killing of American troops in Iraq. While his freedom to speak trumps our disdain towards him, his "views" (and I have trouble even giving them so much credence) are wrong. His calls for the destruction of America and Israel are serious threats to our security and that of our ally, and his unabashed quest for nuclear weapons must be stopped at all costs.

But still, I support Bollinger's invitation, because I uncompromisingly support freedom of speech in this country and around the world. True, we don't need Ahmadinejad to prove the resilience of the First Amendment -- we have the KKK for that. And we couldn't possibly be inviting him in order to understand his actions. There is no "middle ground" on executing a rape victim for "promiscuous behavior," on wiping Israel off the map, or on killing Americans in Iraq. We don't need to understand him when he's wrong. Then why bother engaging him? What can we stand to gain from talking, when it seems as though there is absolutely no room for negotiation?

The answer can be found once we realize that Ahmadinejad may not be an apocalyptic lunatic. Bin Laden is a lunatic -- there is no room for negotiation with al-Qaeda. If Ahmadinejad is a lunatic a la Hitler or bin Laden, then we cannot engage him, and we cannot negotiate with him. If, however, Ahmadinejad is simply a Bismarckian politician, then we can use his realpolitik to our advantage. If that is the case, Ahmadinejad's nationalist rhetoric, scapegoating, restrictions on freedom of expression, gender discrimination, and state-sponsored terrorism are all standard operating procedure for an Islamofascist dictator bent on consolidating his power at home and expanding his influence abroad, not a nutcase who wants himself and his country to die.

And then there is the nuclear issue -- both the problem and the solution. In Ahmadinejad's calculating but backwards head, saber-rattling gives him legitimacy, and nuclear weapons puts "the Great Nation of Iran" on equal footing with America. The West should not and will not let him have nuclear weapons; but now, he's backed himself into this corner, and he needs our help to let him save face peacefully.

America's opportunity for engagement is now: Iran's oil-dependent economy is in the doldrums, and Iran's young population wants to enjoy the virtues of capitalism and freedom. Now is not the time to isolate Iran -- isolation is what got Iran into this mess in the first place. Instead, we ratchet up the carrots and the sticks. We pass a third round of Security Council sanctions (one that actually has teeth), and we target Iran's ability to import refined oil (although it has huge crude oil reserves, Iran has little domestic refining capability). Simultaneously, we offer them economic assistance if they phase out their nuclear program. We offer to speak to them as a state, not as an evil enemy, and the dignity that Iran will get from this will allow Ahmadinejad to back off without hurting his nationalist credentials. Once that issue is resolved, the rest of the dominoes will begin to fall: Ahmadinejad will be the savior of his country, and he will be responsive to, not enemies
with, the West. The world is currently facing a nuclear-tipped Scylla of appeasement and Charybdis of isolation -- assuming Ahmadinejad is not a lunatic, it is up to America to find the middle ground of tough engagement. I genuinely don't understand the quaking fear over Ahmadinejad's interview at Columbia. When did America become so weak, so insecure, that we mistrust our capacity to converse with potentially hostile world leaders? Do we really believe the president of Columbia is so doltish as to be outsmarted by a former traffic engineer from Tehran? Do we really see no utility in publicly grilling prominent liars in such a way that their denials lose credibility? What do we have to lose from a foreign leader, even a hostile one, somberly laying a wreath at the site of a tragedy? When did we become so afraid? And for all the conservative talk that a loss in Iraq will diminish our reputation for strength and thus harm our security, how must it look when some three-foot
tall Iranian firebrand keeps trying to dialogue with us and we keep dodging his calls?I think it's worth distinguishing between two inter-related objections to Ahmadinejad's Columbia appearance. The first, which is mine, is that it's shameful for a great American university to supply a prominent platform to an odious figure like Iran's President, particularly at a time when his government is almost certainly involved in attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. The second, which can follow from the first but doesn't necessarily, is that the act of inviting Ahmadinejad to speak is a manifestation of American weakness that may eventually contribute to our destruction at the hands of our enemies. For hints of the latter take, see this Roger Kimball post, in which he quotes from Bagehot:

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.Were the year 1938, and the speaker in question Adolf Hitler as opposed to Ahmadinejad, this quotation would feel more apropos. But this is where I part ways with some of my confreres on the right: I don't think it's accurate or useful to suggest that the American intellectual class is preparing our country for "destruction" by extending a nauseating degree of courtesy to a poisonous Iranian demagogue. The German Fuhrer was actually an existential threat to the free nations of the West, and the failure of the chattering classes of his era to reckon with that threat did prepare their nations for the destruction visited on them in World War II. Whereas Ahmadinejad is a tinhorn rabblerouser with a tenous grip on power, and the country he a
ttempts to rule is a paper tiger whose quest for nuclear weapons is a manifestation of its weakness, not its strength. I despise him, and I fervently wish that I inhabited a country whose great universities had the good sense not to treat his appearance in New York as an occasion for a lesson in "free speech." (Particularly given the slight double standard that occasionally seems to be at work in American academia these days.) But I don't fear him, because I think that America is easily strong enough - and our enemies weak enough, more importantly - to survive the folly on display at Columbia University today.