From Mumia to The Iranian Dictator - Higher Education Lowers Standards When Killers Are Invited
Not since the now-defunct Antioch College invited Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal to speak on tape at its graduation years ago, has an American university been so embarrassed.
Iranian dictator Ahmadijenad, invited by a Columbia professor who also said he would have invited Hitler to speak, delivered his usual Holocaust-denying and hate-filled dialogue at Columbia.
The President of Columbia introduced the dictator with an aggressive and hostile attack on the dictator’s record of violence and repression. Ahmadijenad responded with new assertions about the Holocaust and something new in his repertoire – doubts about the origin of 9/11.
In fairness to the University, here is what Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia, wrote to his campus community prior to the speech:
“I would like just to repeat what I have said earlier: It is vitally
important for a university to protect the right of our schools, our
deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes.
Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with
beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even
odious.
But it should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we
deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the
weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about
the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical
premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable
when we open the public forum to their voices.”
These are lofty and idealistic thoughts, but I have a question: Would Columbia or any American university or college invite a murderer to speak> Would Columbia or any American university invite an individual who advocates genocide?
These are the central questions in this debate.
That’s the last I’ll have to say until the next university or college, under the guide of American freedoms, allows another killer to speak.
