Eh, ok... so I have a bunch of feelings about Columbia's decision to invite the Iranian president/dictator/sort of strange guy/Holocaust denier/....... to speak on campus while he was in New York for a UN session. But I was almost willing to put some of the feelings aside in the interest of my former university's "We support free speech at all costs claim," until the debate actually happened.
I wish he hadn't been invited. Frankly, I don't feel I learned a great deal either from Bollinger or Ahmadinejad. What I did learn however, is that in order for one to "honor" the ideal of free speech, that same person must be a free listener. If you don't listen and question what the free speaker is saying, what are you gaining? At one point a person asked Ahmadinejad, "Do you support the destruction of the state of Israel?" to which Ahmadinejad replied (in more words) "I support Palestinian self-determination and the right of the Palestinian people to have a state where they choose." Now, a "free listener" might have asked "Well, what if the Palestinians want to live in Israel, and have that as their state?" Instead, the next question was the oh so clever "that was a yes or no question." Columbia suggested that the whole point of having him come to campus was so that they could ask him some tough questions and really pin him down on his radical claims for which people hate him so much. Instead, they cowardly backed off, and stuck to some formulaic set of questions that were probably typed up in some super secret meeting about how to ask smart questions.
In the end my reason for not inviting him would have been that the non-invitation would have been an exercise of free expression in itself... solidarity with the rest of the New York community that we didn't support him or his views. The city flat out denied his request to place a wreath at Ground Zero. Inaction speaks louder than words here.......
