<p>The UN is filled with several anti-American nations -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Parkistan (just to name a few). Why should I be surprised that he was invited to speak to the UN?</p>
<p>Couldn't the Columbia community have learned what they needed to from his appearance at the UN? Why give him an additional opportunity to spit on America? </p>
<p>I still say that the joke is going to be on Columbia in the end.</p>
<p>
[quote]
wait! acinva, do you mind coming back to answer my question about the UN....i'm really interested in how you will try to rationalize that or maybe start trashing the UN or something.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Who said he has to be "invited" to speak at the UN? Any member nation -- from Angola to Zimbabwe (or whatever the hell the 1st and last in the alphabet are) -- gets the microphone for some amount of time at some point in the UN's proceedings, whether it's a head-of-state, foreign minister / secretary of state, ambassador to the US, or ambassador to the UN.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Couldn't the Columbia community have learned what they needed to from his appearance at the UN? Why give him an additional opportunity to spit on America?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>They want to give him the opportunity to spit on America, perhaps. I mean, he's probably not far off from several of the MELAC faculty in terms of his views. Do we really think Edward Said didn't want Israel wiped off the map?</p>
<p>How many hate speech codes does Columbia have in place? You can ban Ward Connerly from speaking because he is too big a security threat but this puss sucking sand goblin gets a forum? Columbia University is a joke. We know what their commitment to free speech looks like.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfnn7wTgoE8%5B/url%5D">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfnn7wTgoE8</a></p>
<p>Columbia invites a mob of thugs in to attack a conservative speaker, but will spare no expense protecting Ahmaholocaustdenier. The school and its leadership are a joke.</p>
<p>this whole thing makes me so poed. i want to apply to columbia but this is giving me doubts: why should i apply to a university that invites someone who is a blatant denier of free speech and wants people killed and claims that this is free speech? u actually think he will respond to the questions like ur hoping?!!! r u nuts?! he will have carefully calculated answers that absolve him of any responsbility for what he has done. and i doubt that any students will rush the stage when this nazi is up there speaking. i wish i was there so i could be protesting, not so that i could hear him spew some hate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
he will have carefully calculated answers that absolve him of any responsbility for what he has done.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>what has he done? it has mostly been a bunch of talk.....talk that really isn't very shocking or new to middle eastern politics. maybe the holocaust denial is taking it a bit too far for shock value but everything else is pretty standard rhetoric.</p>
<p>does anyone - especially current students - know if this event will be simulcast on the web tomorrow? I'd love to follow along while i'm pretending to do work.</p>
<p><a href="http://worldleaders.columbia.edu/help.html#videos%5B/url%5D">http://worldleaders.columbia.edu/help.html#videos</a> </p>
<p>scroll to the bottom....they aren't specific about this event though</p>
<p>Denzera, I'm pretty sure it will be.</p>
<p>Yeah, they've got a big fatty TV set out on the steps.</p>
<p>Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:</p>
<p>I would like to share a few thoughts about todays appearance of President Ahmadinejad at our World Leaders Forum. I know this is a matter of deep concern for many in our University community and beyond. I want to say first and foremost how proud I am of Columbia, especially our students, as we discuss, debate and plan for this highly visible event.</p>
<p>I ask that each of us make special efforts to respect the different views people have about the event and to recognize the different ways it affects members of our community. For many reasons, this will demand the best of each of us to live up to the best of Columbia's traditions.</p>
<p>For the School of International and Public Affairs, which developed the idea for this forum as the commencement to a year-long examination of 30 years of the Islamic Republic in Iran, this is an important educational experience for training future leaders to confront the world as it is -- a world that includes far too many brutal, anti-democratic and repressive regimes. For the rest of us, this occasion is not only about the speaker but quite centrally about us -- about who we are as a nation and what universities can be in our society.</p>
<p>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.**</p>
<p>The great majority of student leaders with whom I met last week affirmed their belief that this event, however controversial, is consistent with the values of academic freedom we share at the center of university life. I fully support, indeed I celebrate, the right to peacefully demonstrate and engage in a dialogue about this event and this speaker, as I understand a wide coalition of our student groups are planning for today. That such a forum and such public criticism of President Ahmadinejads statements and policies could not safely take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. The kind of freedom that will be on display at Columbia has always been and remains today our nations most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is the power and example of America at its best.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Lee C. Bollinger</p>
<p>Yeah, so.....................</p>
<ul>
<li><p>A translated, live simulcast of the event, which is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. in the Lerner auditorium, will be available on campus in the following ways:</p>
<p>*a 17x13' video screen will be set up on the east South Lawn, adjacent to the student rally/forum; members of the Columbia community are welcome to sit on the lawn and watch and listen to the event</p>
<p>*on-screen in Davis Auditorium in CEPSR (Schapiro)</p>
<p>*via CUTV (on channel 74), which is available on many campus televisions/monitors, including those in residence hall lounges</p></li>
<li><p>There will be no live webcast, but the World Leaders Forum typically posts archived video of their events online</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is on Fox News if anyone is interested.</p>
<p>Watching the Ach-man's speech right now. So far it is just a notch below the comprehensibility of Miss South Carolina.....</p>
<p>I think he came off relatively well with some notable exceptions. The problem was the guy asking the questions. He hardly challenged him on anything.</p>
<p>Wow, I really liked when he said "we do not have homosexuals in Iran!" The combination of laughs and boos was priceless.</p>
<p>I thought is was going to be more of a dialogue. Instead it was mainly Q & A, which is a shame because it left Ahmadinejad coming off the best he could have hoped for.</p>
<p>^ Hardly a surprise.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I thought is was going to be more of a dialogue. Instead it was mainly Q & A, which is a shame because it left Ahmadinejad coming off the best he could have hoped for.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You can't have a dialogue with someone who isn't willing to talk. I think it was better that he was probed on a number of different points rather than running around in circles with him about how comparing the holocaust to physics just isnt quite the same thing....</p>
<p>Asking him the same questions over and over again will only get you back to where you started. He is not a dumb man and was ready for the questions he knew would be asked of him. His "there are no homosexuals in iran, i don't know who told you this" point was, most likely, not rehearsed tho...</p>
<p>I do have to applaud him though. With a few notable exceptions, I think he was very intelligent and diplomatic about his responses. I'm very glad that columbia had the opportunity to do this. It will be really interesting to see if any faculty/students actually take him up on his offer to visit iran.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You can't have a dialogue with someone who isn't willing to talk.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, but him coming to Columbia was touted as a dialogue. At the very least it lessens his ability to spew his rhetoric uncontested.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think he was very intelligent and diplomatic about his responses. I'm very glad that Columbia had the opportunity to do this.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Agree on both accounts. He does seem very intelligent, and I wish the whole ordeal lasted longer.</p>