Why am I so angry about this, I wondered, my heart palpitating as I poured through the accounts of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech yesterday at Columbia. It was over-— the Iranian president would soon be on a plane back to Tehran — and yet somehow it still wasn’t over for me. Grow up, I told myself. So what, Columbia hosted a world leader who denies the Holocaust, supports Israel’s destruction, seeks nukes, believes the End is nigh, oppresses women and executes gays (though apparently they “have [none] in Iran“) … It was all in the spirit of academic inquiry — why was I getting so worked up? And then it hit me: I was asking the wrong question. I had plenty of reasons to be outraged; what I couldn’t figure out was why so many others weren’t.
“Freedom of speech is what makes our country so great,” my friends at The Sun rhapsodized in yesterday’s editorial. “If we were to deny [Ahmadinejad] a podium to espouse [his] views, our policies would be no better than [his] own. We may not agree with what you have to say, Mahmoud, but we’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Alas, my friends aren’t as bright as I imagined if they don’t grasp — or can’t articulate — the difference between a right (freedom of speech) and a privilege (speaking at an Ivy League university). Do the editorial’s authors really believe, as they imply, that a decision by Columbia not to provide this apocalyptic psychopath “a podium to espouse [his] views” would be akin to shutting down reformist newspapers, imprisoning liberal professors and executing democratic dissidents? I’m reassured, at least, that they “may not agree with what Ahmadinejad has to say” (I guess do not was too strong) even if they’ll “defend to the death his right to say it” (to the death … how apt). Sadly, my editors weren’t nearly as keen on defending my right to publish the original version of this paragraph.
The Sun’s confusion notwithstanding, the controversy over Ahmadinejad’s Columbia visit never was over free speech — nobody serious was disputing Ahmadinejad’s right to say whatever he wished, wherever he happened to be. Nor was it a legal matter — Columbia, located as it is within a prescribed radius of the United Nations, broke no law in inviting the Iranian president while he was in town. This was foremost about Columbia’s wisdom (or lack thereof) in granting someone with Ahmadinejad’s resume the unavoidable legitimacy that comes with a brand name like theirs.
Yet everywhere I looked, at Columbia and Cornell, howls of protest were overwhelmed by whistles of approval. Predictably, the loudest voices defending Ahmadinejad’s appearance emanated from Columbia’s sizable far left — the same crowd, ironically, whose members saw it fit to rush the stage during Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist’s speech last year. Apparently, these so-called liberals only approve of their school hosting militant xenophobes if they’re Third-World militant xenophobes. At least John Coatsworth, dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, was consistent — he said that if the year were 1939, and Hitler were in town, “we’d certainly invite him to speak” — consistently insane, but consistent. (Incidentally, Columbia did host Nazi envoy Hans Luther in 1933, so I guess they had a history to live up to.)
President Bollinger, who deserves some credit for his strikingly non-deferential introduction of Ahmadinejad, framed the Iranian leader’s visit as an opportunity for robust debate. I’m not sure what debate he envisioned — whether the Holocaust happened? Whether homosexuals should be stoned? But I agree that this forum, at the very least, provided an opportunity for this nut to be challenged. Too many others, however, summed up the value of Ahmadinejad’s visit differently — as an opportunity not to debate this man’s primitive ideas, but to engage him in a dialogue.
The useful idiots who subscribe to this view seem to believe that the American confrontation with radical Islam is really just the result of one giant miscommunication — and that if we just all get together and hear each other out, we can hammer out our differences.
“9/11 was a failure of human understanding,” said Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in his first 9/11 address two weeks ago. “It was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States. But it was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.”
The keyword in Mister Rogers’ speech here is each other. The fault for 9/11 was mutual. It wasn’t just the Jihadists who failed to understand us — it was also you, dear reader, who failed to understand them … to love them.
Sorry, Deval Patrick, but I believe I understand them just fine. And I do not wish to love them.
(Forgive me for nitpicking here, but am I alone in finding something wanting in Governor Rogers’ characterization of the 9/11 attacks as “mean,” “nasty” and “bitter?” The schoolyard bully who stole my lunch money was “mean;” the way my ex-girlfriend speaks to me is “bitter;” the letters I plan to receive in response this column will be “nasty;” the attacks of 9/11 were barbaric.)
Governor Patrick and his fellow cheerleaders for dialogue with the forces of Jihad fail to appreciate just how serious — and, unfortunately, how numerous — our foes in the Muslim world are, be they Sunni Salafists like bin Laden or Shi’ite apocalyptics like Ahmadinejad.
Fortunately, what we’ve been witnessing since 9/11 is not so much a clash of civilizations as it is a clash within a civilization — between those who would keep the Muslim world in the past and those who would bring it into the future. And we have many Muslim allies in that struggle — it is with them that we should be having a dialogue, one on how to confront these retrograde forces together.
If Columbia wants its students to better understand the views of Ahmadinejad, it should encourage them to pick up a newspaper (he seems to enjoy the front page). If it wants to start a productive discussion about how to move Iran, let it invite someone like Nobel Peace Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi, who’s been jailed by the current regime for fighting its human-rights abuses. She, not Ahmadinejad, represents the real Iran — a civilized nation being held captive by medieval-minded rulers.
Ben Birnbaum is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bbirnbaum@cornellsun.com. Infomaniacs Anonymous appears Tuesdays this semester.