On Columbia!
As a former alum — well, I guess being a grad student at Columbia counts as being an alum — I have to say I was pleased to see that the old school took a stand for academic freedom and freedom of speech earlier this week when it invited one of the original evildoers to campus to give us his side of the story.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited by Columbia to speak and, one assumes, defend some of the positions staked out by his increasingly dictatorial and probably desperate regime.
Some of his ideas are plain nutty — news flash to Mahmoud — the Holocaust really did happen, and two, there is an excellent chance that there are such things as homosexuals in Iran. But we really do have a lot at stake here with his nuclear aspirations and the unclear role Iran is playing in the volitile politics of next-door neighbor Iraq.
Iran coulld play a constructive role there, if the klutsy Bush administration could ever get its act straight, but Iran doesn't show many signs of wanting to do much more than pour gasoline on an already raging fire.
But here's the main point and why Columbia showed us once again what the difference is between Iran and the U.S. — freedom of speech was served. Here's a guy that probably would delight in seeing our destruction, but he got a chance to tell his side of the story. I think it might have been better if Columbia's President, Lee Bollinger, Jr., hadn't taken the combative tone he did in his introductory remarks, but no matter. Ahmadinejad got to reveal himself for the tinpot crazy he is, deflecting and obfuscating away in response to the questions posed to him.
But like him or not, he's the guy we have to deal with for now in Iran. He was democratically elected fair and square, relative to Iran. But we're not perfect either when it comes to that — remember those hanging chads — so his legitimacy is not in question.
Where he is leading that important country is another matter. Recent news reports have indicated considerable discontent over the harsh crackdown on individual liberties, again, relative to Iran — and the soaring cost of gasoline, a supreme irony in a nation that sits atop an ocean of oil. That oil weapon, plus the nuclear weapon, or the potential for it, makes Iran a place we unfortunately have to reckon with.
So three cheers for good old Columbia for having him, and, in a funny way, also to Ahmadinejad for going. He probably enjoyed the publicity and his motives are also going to be suspect, but, hey, he didn't have to go before a hostille audience either. So since this is America, we can give him credit for that. Hopefully he'll leave the U.S. wiser for his exposure to life here, although that's probably too much to expect.
It's been more than 20 years since I last strolled the big green at Columbia between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, flanked by the two big libraries. What a great school. I met some great folks there, teachers, fellow students and it was my one brush with the real high end world of academe. It was so worth it. It was good to see the place back in the news in a positive way.