September 25, 2007--The Toothless Lion

In spite of the opening sentence in the NY Times’ report about Ahmadinejad at Columbia, the critical issues we and the rest of the world face do no include homosexuality in Iran or, hate me, the historical truth about the Holocaust. (See article linked below.) And although Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, in his introductory remarks spoke about the essential need for “us to better understand this critical and complex nation in today’s geopolitics,” little in what he went on to say and even less of what was raised by the audience’s questions had anything at all to do with geopolitical issues. What we heard was basically a reflection of the kind of cultural wedge issues that pollute our own political discourse and distract us from having to deal with larger, more threatening realities. Of course it’s important to be concerned about the status of homosexuals and Jews and women in Iran and everywhere else, but what does that have anything to do with the dominant geopolitical role that Iran is more and more playing? There are homosexuals in Iran and the rights of women there are becoming increasingly abrogated and, yes, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier regardless of yesterday’s wiggling and spinning. And he has on other occasions said that Israel must be wiped off the map and Iran is likely moving toward the development of nuclear weapons. But most dangerous is Iran’s role in spreading their form of political Islam throughout the Middle East and, if successful, controlling much of the world’s oil resources. Now this is geopolitical! But there was virtually no discussion of any of this by either Bollinger or the assembled students. Instead, after Bollinger’s impressive defense of why it is not only appropriate but essential for universities to serve as free spaces for open discourse on all subjects (none of this was reported in the media), he went on to an intemperate and highly personal attack on Ahmadinejad’s character and “astonishing” lack of education. All of this juicy stuff was reported over and over again on all the news networks. (As a Jewish alum of Columbia I can only conclude that these remarks were an attempt to pander to the university’s substantial Jewish donor base.) If Bollinger thought that by hosting this forum his institution would be modeling ways in which to encounter and deal with upsetting ideas, he would not have spent nearly an hour in a preemptive tirade that in effect took time away from the student question and answer period, as if by doing this he was saying, “Only I can protect you from this man and his evil ideas since you are not capable of doing so yourselves. In spite of your off-the-chart SAT scores.” And if Bollinger was truly proud of Columbia’s role in this affair why would he have set himself up on the stage fully 20 feet distant from Ahmadinejad (as if he feared he might get infected) and why did he order all Columbia logos to be covered up on the podia and back curtain?