Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Columbia's "Controversy"

Leading up to today's event, which I attended, I kept hearing and reading that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a "controversial" figure. But controversy implies a dispute, and there seems to be a unanimous consensus on campus that the Iranian president is repugnant, and his world views reprehensible.

For that reason it might be more appropriate to label Ahmadinejad as a "divisive figure." The controversy, after all, isn't about him, so much is it about us. Whether we can extend tolerance to those who espouse intolerance and hatred, and whether we are secure enough in our own positions and institutions to listen to public criticism from someone who would censure such discourse within his own nation.

President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University expanded on this important distinction during his frigid welcoming remarks to Mr. Ahmadinejad: "We are required by the norms of free speech" to "excercise extraordinary restraint and not retreat" in the "face of evil." "We do not honor the dishonorable," he said, but "do it for ourselves, to understand the world we live in."

Mr. Bollinger's remarks were not addressed to Mr. Ahmadinejad. In fact, I don't recall him ever even looking at the man. They were addressed to those within the greater audience that would criticize Columbia for offering its institutional legitimacy as leverage to a Holocaust denier and terrorist sponsor. "I am only a professor who happens to be the President of a University," Bollinger said, before briskly walking off stage. "I speak for those yearning to express their collective revulsion. I only wish I could do better."

As a student of Columbia, and an American citizen, I wish Bollinger had done better too. I found his petty insults (at one point he charged "I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions") to be unnecessarily aggressive and uncivil. He promised a "robust discourse" and delivered a bait-and-switch public admonition, to which Ahmadinejad rightfully took offense, as a guest of the University.

Just as we must show restraint in not retreating from contentious debates, so must we constructively engage in these debates in an effort to embolden our own positions and weaken our enemies'. Insults are, and have always been, the trademark of the insecure.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, recognized his role in our internal debate over free-speech and discourse. He warned that self-absorption allows for misconstrual of the actions and intentions of others. That questioning the rights of others to ask questions is in itself a questionable practice.

All very enlightening guiding principles, if they were actually practiced and recognized within his country, or if the questions he was asking weren't the veracity of the Holocaust. (The highlight of the event by far was when, in response to accusations of repressing homosexuality, he stated: "Iran doesn't have the issue of homosexuals," and the audience collectively laughed at him.)

Ahmadinejad is a crackpot, certainly. But it is not enough to dismiss him with an insulting label and move on. We must be willing to listen to the accusations of our enemies in order to properly defend the actions we take in the world in which we live. And I am proud to be part of a university and country that is strong enough to allow such discourse.

Comments

[Blutenhalbmond]

It is a bit odd for Bollinger to call Ahmedenijad a 'dictator' or a 'tyrant' (or was it a 'despot'?) considering the fact that he was elected in fair elections rather than through some shady shenanigans of a brother who was a governor of a swing state, followed by a dubious ruling of a Supreme Court dominated by judges who were appointed by his own political party.

[Blutenhalbmond]

I heard him at Columbia and from what I gather, he was not denying the Holocaust but only insisting that more research be done. Why do we have to make our current knowledge of the Holocaust, a closed book, seemed to be his point. What is so upsetting about asking that we continue our research? What are we afraid of finding out?? He has not denied the Holocaust as such. Has he?

Second, why is it that Steamboat and others constantly describe him as a "nutjob"? What did they find nutty about him, specifically? Or even, evil? What evil did he espouse, exactly? He hardly sounded like a nut or a lunatic as some describe him.

Third, regarding his denial of the existence of homosexuality in Iran, I wonder if it could be "Ask no questions" policy? Of course he knows that there is homosexuality in Iran, but officially it does not exist and the President cannot openly admit to its existence. For decades US had virtually blocked off Red China from its official perspective and the PLO too. Or for that matter, the the Israelis too had denied the existence of Palestinians. Golda Meir had asked once, "Who are these people, the Palestinains?" There was no such thing, as far as she was concerned. Rev. Hagee even today denies that there are Palestinians!

Lastly, some have wondered how Bush would fare if he ever dared to address a foreign university. I do not think that he would evn dare to address an American university crowd, let alone a foreign university. Even when addressing a handpicked audience from his own his own base, the questions he gets are vetted. The Whitehouse press once was actually provided with questions to ask Bush and they, the spineless critters, dutifully obliged.

And here was a president of a country, taking genuine questions from a hostile audience and holding his own. And such a man is being referred to as a, "nutjob"?

[Akass]

I'm pleased that Mr. Host recognized the the President of Columbia University was petty and rude in his introductory remarks. He should be ashamed of himself.

Unfortunately, Mr. Host has himself fallen into the Bush trap of demonizing, or at least marginalizing, Ahmadinejad by calling him a crackpot. This tactic of dehumanizing other world leaders, including, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and Vladmir Putin, conveys no meaningful information but serves only to make Americans less resistant to going to war with them.

I am also disappointed that Mr. Host repeated that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier, another false belief carefully manufactured by Bush, Inc., with lots of help from AIPAC, also for the purpose of dehumanizing him.

Ahmadinejad said during his first 60 Minutes interview that the point he was trying to make is that 60 million people were killed in WWII, and he questioned whether the 6 million who were Jews should be considered more important than the other 56 million.

At Columbia University he again said that it was time for THE holocaust to be examined from different perspectives. I agree. For example, the murder of 6 million Jews was not the only holocaust that has ever happened, but the word has been reduced to that. Other holocausts have occurred--the murder of millions of Native Americans, for example--and still more are occurring today, repackaged as "ethnic cleansing." The word holocaust has been misappropriated to refer to one hideous event when it needs to be recognized as reoccurring human behavior, if we're to understand and prevent it.

It saddens me to see people who should know better help Bush set the stage for war with Iran.

[deleweye]

Given that:

1. Bush is an incompetent, intolerant thug who stole the Presidency and will turn this country into a fascist theocracy if his fiscal irresponsibility doesn't bankrupt the place first; and

2. He will do everything he can to get us into a war with Iran before he leaves office, and because of the spinelessness of the "progressive" opposition, will probably get away with it; and

3. Bollinger's remarks were a piece of political CYA.

However, the attitudes expressed by the majority of posters here - as well as the censors ("moderators"?) of this site - consist of at times multi-dimensional rationalizations to avoid confronting the evil of the representative of a government which executes children for "sexual deviancy", which imprisons women for not dressing "modestly", which denies self-determination to the Kurdish nation, ad infinitum ad nauseum. America's injustices will never justify Iran's - they only seem to provide some of you an excuse for not fighting injustice wherever it is found.

[CitizenE]

It occurs to me that (pardon my conspiracy theory ideology) it has served Americans of all persuasions as well as neighboring Arab nations for the Palestinians and the Israelis to take the fall for American and/or Arabist or Islamist middle east politics. An attitude that has reached its apotheosis during the Bush years, in which our nation and its government would rather do anything but do the hard work of helping bring a peaceful solution to one of the most troubled spots in the world. Arabs are not semitic, but Palestinians are; the whole world is pretty much anti-semitic, and that has been true for millenia now.

[Ragtimer]

I just can't read all the bantering going on here. Much is said, as I have read, about symantics of what most people assume to be the truth as apose to what it actually is.
But what isn't being said is that the people of the US have a bias pair of blinders on and prejudices of their own, all based on hear-say accusations. They don't consider that many things MahMoud say are absolultel true.

Being that the "powers" controlling the free flow of truth are regulated so as to not have people hold thoughts to long that might lead them away for the prescribed Bush propaganda machine.

As well, there seems to be little of any owner/reponsiblility to the fact that the US does in fact push a capitalistic agenda upon other countries that is the cause of most all of the decline of the qualities of the diversity of indiginous peoples, where by they are inadvertantly absorbed into the globalized model and become insignificant members of the system. Thereby losing their character and eventially their culture is reliquated to museum statis. Just take the Hawiians for instants. Their culture has gone to the way-side of tourist entertainment for the most part. Same as the American Indians. And didn't the US bomb and destoy most of the historical records of the "Cradle of civilization, Mesopetamia" (IRAQ) to smitherens? All for weapons of mass destruction?

But oh how shallow as the generations of Americans have become to knowing how the new comers to this continent have raped, pilaged and plundered this country. Now they are doing essentially the same to others as they push their influence and the false-American dream around the world.

Mahmoud Ad....may very well be or not be, as many of you seem to have embraced. But we must recognize the rest of the worlds view of US for we have no righ to t tell the rest of the world to follow our rule. After all our government kills in our name, with out our consent.

[laocoon]

I see the next war being set up. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to join in the chorus of how bad Ahmadjinedad is. Soon that will used as a weapon to insist that there is some consensus that he is not credible. If we say he is arming nuclear weapons or committing some impropriety, that ends the debate because "even liberals agree how bad and unworthy of belief he is." I am more concerned about the powerful and active evil in this country. Dont be suckered into creating a new consensus wisdom that is intended as a ploy to herd us into a war. The media is already trying hard to conform. Resist this ploy. You have seen it before and should know better.

[tEDDIEbear]

He (Ahmadinejad) is at it again, on television spewing more illogical logic for the United Nations. More ranting and raving about all illogical. He opens his mouth and the "poop" just rolls out, over a twisted tongue.

[mode4811]

Mr. President, Iran's policy of racism was on world display when it hosted the Tehran conference denying the Nazi Holocaust. The GA responded with a condemnation of Holocaust denial, which Iran alone refused to support.1

This council's expert on racism said the following: "By organizing this conference, President Ahmadinejad demonstrated his intention to legitimize the revisionism of other forms of racism by inviting symbolic figures of anti-black racism, such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose main platform is the racial inferiority of black people and the need for their physical elimination."2

But it's worse. Iran's president not only denies genocide, but he incites to genocide. When he first threatened to "wipe Israel off the map," he was condemned by Kofi Annan and the Security Council.3 When he called for the "destruction of the Zionist regime," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his shock and dismay.4

Dr. Hamburg, an advisor to the Secretary-General on genocide, said that he could not recall anyone "since Hitler who so repeatedly and explicitly called for genocide," and he warned of the combustible conjunction of this with nuclear weapons capability.5

Mr. President, does the UN have an answer for a government that tramples human rights, practices racism, denies the Holocaust, incites to genocide and threatens international peace?

It does. Under Article 6 of the UN Charter, a country that persistently violates the Charter"s principles may be expelled.

And the correct answer for a government leader who commits such acts is not an invitation to a UN podium and global platform. It is the response recommended by Noble Laureate and UN Messenger of Peace Eli Wiesel: the indictment of President Ahmadinejad under the Genocide Convention.

[mode4811]

Iran vs. Human Rights and The UN charter
Delivered by Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch

Mr. President, we meet to address urgent human rights situations. There are so many. But if we look to the highest authorities of the UN, one country stands out: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security. But the illicit nuclear program of President Ahmadinejad potentially threatens these rights for millions, near and far. That's why the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII against threats to the peace, held Iran to be in breach, and imposed sanctions.

The Iranian leader speaks at the UN about "human dignity and justice." Yet the UN itself -- GA Resolution 61/176 " found that Iran treats its own people with neither dignity nor justice. It called on Iran:

*
to end its use of torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment;
*
to end its execution of minors, and its violence and discrimination against women;
*
to end its discrimination against minorities, including Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis, Sunni Muslims, and the Baha'i.

[mode4811]

The case against Ahmadinejad:
http://www.unwatch.org/site/c.bdKKISNqEmG/b.3441443/k.3638/Indict_Irans_President_Ahmadinejad.htm

[FlowerGirl]

I wish our president were as intelligent as Iran's. I wish our leaders were as interested in peace and justice. I wish my counntrymen were such gentlemen.
I despise lies, and those opposed to the Iranian president have not ceased to lie about him and his country. Of course, they must. there is no valid reason for war with Iran, but they do so desire it. And lies worked so well for them in the case of Iraq. The lies now are harder to sell. But they keep coming.
There is evil in the world. I think many here have been looking in the wrong places. (Bush, it isn't under the coffee table. It is in your small heart.)

[Aquarius52]

Good for you Jon. Good article. For awhile there I thought I was alone as I saw all the talking heads on FOX and CNN congratulate Bollinger and even attack a contributor or 2 who timidly suggested that he could have been more nuanced in his "introduction".

This is a classic case of a temper tantrum by Bollinger being so over the top that it engendered a little sympathy for Ahmadinejad. I never thought that would have been possible, frankly. The Iranian President's response was more targeted, balanced and civil, despite outrageous claims like "there are no homosexuals in Iran". That does not say a lot for Bollinger.

I suspect as Jon says that Bollinger was not simply venting, like a kid holding his breath till he turns blue , but trying to appease the critics who didnt like the invitation in the first place. That wimpy backtracking is OK, I suppose. But once the invitation had been given however, it required more civility and maturity than exhibited in Bollinger's tirade.

[phylebe]

We, Eberhard & Phyllis Kronhausen, fully agree that Columbia's president (and we are both doctoral grads of TC-Columbia, vintage '56 and '58), got much too personal in his criticism of the invited speaker, Ahmadenejedad. He could have said the same things, without getting that personal.
Aside from that, though, the Iranian president's responses (or rather non-responses) to the questions posed, uncannily reminded me (Eberhard, a political refugee from the Gestapo) of very similar techniques used by Hitler, Goebbels, & Co. They also kept changing the topic when challenged and turned a question into an accusation of the questioner.
As the psychologists that we are, the whole affair also reminded us of what a crazy world it is, indeed, that we live in. It is this "craziness" of our world that seems to us at the crux of most of our troubles. But, this is not the time and place to go too deeply into this vital topic (we shall do so in a forthcoming book, devoted to this particular subject matter--keep tuned).

[NOSMAVAN]

George W. Bush and Ahmadjinehad need and live off each other. Ahmadjinehad points to America under Bush to score points with his audience and Bush is only too happy to give A. a new stupidity every day.

George W. Bush points to Ahmadjinehad as THE source of our problems in Iraq, and A. is only too happy to oblige with arms supplies to forces within Iraq.