A lot of energy has been expended this week denouncing Columbia University for allowing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. I might have selected a different speaker, or a different event to attend, if given the choice, but it is hard to begrudge school president Lee Bollinger for issuing the invitation. After all, when is the last time, people were talking so much about Columbia University.
There are three primary reasons Columbia should be given a break:
1) Inviting speakers like Ahmadinejad — a newsmaker, a world leader, somewhat controversial — is something universities do, or at least should do. The university did a great service by providing a forum for its students and faculty to listen, and then challenge and denounce every reprehensible thing Ahmadinejad has ever said.
2) President Bollinger took the lead in challenging and denouncing Ahmadinejad, not succombing to his status or weird sort of celebrity. Maybe he played the rude host, but Ahmadinejad had already received the only courtesy he deserved — an invitation. Don't blame Bollinger that Ahmadinejad was not able to sniff out a possible trap. By ignoring the niceties of being a college president and going on the attack, Bollinger displayed an intellectual honesty that is too often rare on today's campuses.
3) This is totally off-topic but, I believe, telling: In 2006, Columbia University awarded an honorary degree to Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá, demonstrating on which side the school and its leadership are on, in the continuing struggle between freedom and the tyranny best represented by the likes of Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. History has shown many times that the best way to challenge a crazy dictator is head-on, and that's what Columbia did last year, and what it did Monday.
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