At least not according to President Ahmadinejad. Maybe that's because, as Andy at Towelroad also points out, they just "get rid of them."
I'm all for free speech, and even a little provocative anti-Americanism speeches at some universities once in awhile, just to keep people on their toes, but seriously, what the fuck was Columbia thinking?
**UPDATE: All of this makes a little more sense to me now after having viewed Columbia's President's "introduction" yesterday. I'd only heard antecdotes about it yesterday, but not heard the whole thing.
5 comments:
I agree. I had mixed feelings about him speaking, mainly because I figured Columbia would give him softball questions and he would give softball answers (a la his interview last year with Mike Wallace).
But after looking at transcripts and hearing sound bites, it sounded like Bollinger and some students gave him some tough treatment. I really like the intro Bollinger gave him. He pretty much kicked him in the balls. Frankly, I was surprised.
Yeah, I jsut heard that on NPR as well. I was surprised too.
Even before the speech happened, I didn't see what was wrong with Columbia inviting him. (I also thik the KKK ought to be allowed to have their marches.) The guy is a president of another country and a pretty important international figure; why shouldn't a school seek him out?
The introduction the school president was pretty awesome, too. I was expecting some kind of defense of the invitation, but not a full-on assault of the invitee. I thought he effectively rebuked Ahmadinejad and also the Fox News and blogger jackasses that were giving him shit.
I think the KKK should be able to have their marches too. I'm not in favor of limiting people's speech or demonstration rights, but I think there's a vast difference between simply tolerating something and deliberately giving it a platform.
We deliberately give ugly things a platform so people can decide for themselves how ugly they are. After all, if all we do is hear how ugly they are from someone else, then we're either suckers and sheep or we're doubtful that the one providing this information has given this so-called ugly thing a fair shake. But if we can see the ugly thing for ourselves, we get to decide how ugly it is. And if you don't trust the American public (or students and faculty at Columbia) to make up their own minds & use critical thinking skills to evaluate the ugliness, then we've got a bigger problem than whatever Whatzhisface has to say.
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