A new event, or lack of event, has shaken up Israel and general Middle East discourse on university campuses. Last Wednesday, September 18th, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current President of Iran, was invited to speak at Columbia University by dean Lisa Anderson. The Iranian President was in New York City speaking at the United Nations. Within one day, the invitation was rescinded. Columbia’s campus erupted in protests: Ahmadinejad has filled his speeches with vehemently anti-Israel as well as anti-US rhetoric and called for the destruction of Israel as well as a denial of the Holocaust.

So does he have the right, or even a place within a University campus, to speak? When asked by Andrew Grossman from the Michigan Daily, I didn’t automatically say no. I am an advocate of free speech and believe that we can learn from hearing the words of those who criticize us. However, Ahmadinejad is not critical in a constructive or academic language. Upon speaking with friends of mine, students as well as professors, from Columbia who were in the heart of the conflict, it became quite clear that Columbia is a forum for academic insight and Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is simply one of hate.

Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Current (another member of the Azure Student Journal Project), wrote an article in the Columbia Spectator in response to the controversy. She called out to her community, “if you are serious about standing up against hate, you will hold Dean Anderson accountable for offering Ahmadinejad a podium.”

So do we, as university students, have anything to learn from his words or should he be completely dismissed?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 1:24 am and is filed under the Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.