Columbia University said it does not plan to call off a speech by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite pressure from critics including the City Council speaker, who said the Ivy League school was providing a forum for “hate-mongering vitriol.”
The US State Department calls Iran a state sponsor of terror, and Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust “a myth” and urged for Israel to be destroyed.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger, in announcing Ahmadinejad’s upcoming appearance, described the event as part of “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”
So at the request of the Iranian government, Columbia University will host the president of a terrorist regime which is right now responsible for the deaths of American soldiers on the field of battle. Indeed, this distinguished guest, who is so honoring Columbia by his presence, will be introduced by no one less than president Lee Bollinger.
“A major forum for robust debate”?!?! Mr. Bollinger, you are either a complete idiot or a bald-faced liar.
- On Wednesday evening, the gathering came to an untimely demise when, a minute into the remarks by the founder of the Minuteman Project, Jim Gilchrist, Columbia University students stormed the stage, overturning tables and chairs and attacking Mr. Gilchrist and fellow Minutemen Marvin Stewart and Jerome Corsi. Having taken control of the stage, the students, led by the student chapter of the International Socialist Organization, unfurled a banner that read, in both Arabic and English, “Nobody is Illegal.”
- Columbia students who want to serve their country cannot enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Columbia. Columbia students who want to enroll in ROTC must travel to other universities to fulfill their obligations. ROTC has been banned from the Columbia campus since 1969. In 2003, a majority of polled Columbia students supported reinstating ROTC on campus. But in 2005, when the Columbia faculty senate debated the issue, President Bollinger joined the opponents in defeating the effort to invite ROTC back on campus.
Mr. Bollinger, you do nothing while anarchists dismantle a forum aimed at controlling illegal immigration.
Mr. Bollinger, you fall all over yourself to welcome the man who denies the Holocaust, who is doing everything in his power (against international will) to develop nuclear weapons, a man who is supporting the training and arming of terrorists in Iraq, has publicly supported international terrorism that targets innocent American civilians, a man who suppresses of civil society and women’s rights and gay rights in his own country, who imprisons journalists and scholars, but you will not allow the military’s ROTC program on your campus.
Columbia is a private institution. There is no 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech at Columbia. No, this is about Columbia President Lee Bollinger and his Liberal minions to further elevate those that would do damage to the US and to Israel and do it while receiving taxpayer funds. Hitler can only dream that his job would have been this easy back in the 1930’s.
In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.
“There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall,” Mr. Silver said. “Obviously, there’s some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of … knowing that this is that kind of an institution.”
Mr. Silver faulted Columbia for “attempting to legitimize this individual,” saying, “We have an obligation because of the U.N. to allow him to come to this country. It doesn’t mean we have to make him welcome. We don’t have to give him a forum.”
“He’s clearly responsible for the deaths of Americans both in Iraq and elsewhere. And he remains as much a threat to the world as anybody today. I don’t understand what this dean and Columbia are thinking,” Mr. Silver said.
The dean of Columbia Law School, David Schizer, in a statement called Mr. Ahmadinejad “a reprehensible and dangerous figure,” and said it would be “deeply regrettable if some misread this invitation as lending prestige or legitimacy to his views.”
“Reprehensible and dangerous figure” would also apply to Columbia President Lee Bollinger.
Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Lee Bollinger
