In my view Columbia completely disgraced itself, as did the media and commentary generally... The morning of Ahmadenijad's speech at Columbia, the university welcomed the President of Turkmenistan for a speech at a world leaders conference; an outstanding democracy, with a stellar human rights record -- and, incidentally, plenty of natural gas that the US covets. As Ahmadinejad visited New York, Pakistani riot police were beating lawyers and other demonstrators protesting the dictator Musharraf's organization of his forthcoming election -- which might remind us of President Bollinger's effusive praise for the dictator in introducing him for a talk at Columbia. Of course Pakistan is not suspected of developing nuclear weapons. Rather, it developed them, while the Reagan administration politely looked the other way and pretended it did not know, and also harbors the leading nuclear proliferator, Abdul Qadeer Khan. And if we go farther back, we can recall the warm welcome Columbia gave to the Shah of Iran, right after the tyrant was installed in power by a US-UK military coup, overthrowing the parliamentary government. The Shah was presented with an honorary degree as he delivered the Gabriel Silver Lecture Dedicated to International Peace, in which he urged that 'We must be strong enough internally and externally so that the temptation of subversion from within, supported from without, can be obliterated.' Delightful timing... Since Ahmadinejad was not as offensive as was hoped, the press had to seize on his silly remark about homosexuality (see, e.g., the infantile New Yorker cover) -- deeply offensive to countries like ours and Britain that have been so supportive of gay rights since they gained independence centuries ago. For example when the British government forced the great mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing to undergo 'hormone therapy' to cure his disease, leading to his suicide. Just at about the time that the US-UK were installing the Shah and Columbia was inviting him to present deep thoughts on the dangers of 'subversion from within, supported from without.' It was a pathetic display.

Politics·Media·Human rights