Web Letters: Debating Ahmadinejad at Columbia

Who's to blame? If your parents or grandparents owned stock in Bayer, BMW, Daimler-Benz, Ford, Krupp, Shell, Siemens, Volkswagen, or Zeiss-Ikon during the late 1930s and early '40s, they contributed to the Holocaust. Australia had enough uninhabited land to accept every Jewish refugee from Germany during WWII. Why didn't Oz offer refuge? Why didn't any of the allies act like humanitarians when it mattered most?

Jewish displaced persons (DPs) would not and often could not return to their homes of origin after WWII. Did the allies welcome them in the name of brotherhood? Refuge... The allies often put them in "refugee" camps, which brought back horrible memories. Some survived in camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, later Israel. The last Jewish displaced persons camp closed in 1957. Who mistreated the Jews? Recently, Swiss banks, European insurance companies, and museums worldwide have respectively hidden bank account numbers, policy numbers, and assets belonging to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Jews were the primary target of Nazi insanity and evil, but the Nazis slaughtered other groups held as racially, genetically, or intellectually "inferior." Children of mixed (African/German) racial backgrounds were executed. 320,000 to 350,000 German citizens catagorized as physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation sterilization and later slaughtered, including Hitler's mentally handicapped cousin. 30,000 Gypsies were also eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks and other minority races, from intermarrying with Germans. Eventually, they were killed.

Do you see a pattern? Political opponents, conscientious objectors, trade unionists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, non-Jewish citizens of Poland, Communists, and more than 3 million disabled or ill non-Jewish Soviet prisoners of war were murdered. Sick prisoners of all nationalities were eventually sent to the gas chambers. Perfectly healthy resistance fighters and healthy Russian military POWs were executed. If one went by numbers, the Holocaust would be called the Russian Holocaust. More than 20 million Soviets died in WWII, and that is a very conservative estimate.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is correct in saying there's more to know about the Holocaust. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is correct in saying Palestinians are still paying the price for Allied guilt during the Holocaust. His motivations are misguided and selfish, but the same could be said of the oil president George W. Bush (one of whose grandfathers supported the Nazi party) and his actions in Iraq.

It's a great global injustice that Jewish people are still suffering from the Holocaust, but the Palestinians were not and are not the ones to be punished for the humanitarian crimes of the past. The hate of WWII continues to breed hate in the twenty-first century. It did not begin with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it will not end with him.

Jerie K. Leep

Vian, OK

Nice to see a College Administator thinking clearly for a change.

Charles H. Thornton

Reisterstown, MD

Please spare us the faux offense at Bollinger's comments. This is international relations, not some sort of Manhattan dinner party where you're supposed to be really nice to everyone you invite. So he spoke his mind in blunt, uncouth Bush-like language--at least his target was worthy of abuse. Anyone who puts themselves on the left of the political spectrum should take a good hard look at Ahmadinejad's policies. You won't like what you see there, either. Bush, Ahmadinejad--a pox on both houses.

Mike Wendling

London, England

Poor Lee, the lawyer, Bollinger. He tried to come off as a dazzling courtroom Perry Mason, but fell on his adversarial arse.

What can you expect when you send a trained lawyer to do a job fit for a person with genuine love of learning and intellect? What is a lawyer with only a brain-damaging law degree doing playing President of a formerly prestigious university?

Hang the US flag at half-mast. Bollinger has personally assassinated free inquiry and free speech.

Gerald Spezio

Willits, CA

President Ahmadinejad is willing to test freedom of speech. He is willing to test us, too, and has been testing us ever since he became President of Iran. And we have failed, so far, and he has enjoyed it immensely.

I think Mr. A. could be a very successful weekly American columnist. Each week, he would simply offend everyone in America several times over. Each week we would express rage and disgust towards his views, and demand that our newspapers discontinue his column. Each week we would come running back for more. We can't get enough of this kind of thing. Ask Anne Coulter.

Unlike truth, attentian cannot be manufactured, only reallocated. Therefore, in the United States, attention, not truth, is the coin of the realm. This helps us understand how useful it can be to offend a lot of people. When one offends a large group of people, one does not merely bring attention to oneself, but also brings attention to those one has offended, and they will reward you for it, with lots of attention.

If this is a contest, Mr. A has won every round. But the game is not fair. The fact that Mr. A does not need anyone in America to like him gives him the freedom to offend everybody. For example, he brags that Iran has not a single gay person. This offends the left, by suggesting that gayness is inherently bad. But even if Anne Coulter had thought of this one, she would have to keep it to herself: it offends her clientele, by rubbing Larry Craig in their faces. No doubt Mr. A. will get some attention from both corners. "What will the evangelicals say?" we wonder. "What will the faggots say?" we wonder. America will always pay attention to a sparkling new shit storm.

Columbia University came under a lot of criticism for its invitation to Ahmadinejad, and that, I suppose, is why its president, Lee Bollinger, was compelled to to show that he was not un-American--that he is in fact a boorish clod.

If this were a wrestling match to see who isn't the most retarded, then Columbia's President Bollinger basically came out and strangled himself before Ahmadinejad had a chance to put on his tights. Bollinger, in his introduction, delivered scripted, flat-out insults to Ahmadinejad. Is this the American way?

Mr. Bollinger portrayed Ahmadinejad as a petty, cruel, dictator. How better to play right into Mr. A.'s hands? To call Mr. A. petty, whether true or not, is ironic, because the utterance itself is so petty.

And are there any facts to suggest that Ahmadinejad is cruel? Perhaps it is cruel for him stand by as we bite ourselves in the ass.

And dictator? Seriously? The president of this fine American school believes that Mr. A. is a dictator? If this is an opinion, then why bother stating it? If not, then it's just incorrect. Should the president of this fine American school do a little research before making high-profile statements? No. Because, attention, not truth, is the coin of the realm, and Mr. Bollinger saw the opportunity to get some of his.

So Mr. Bollinger follows up with: “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” For the statement to be true only one side of the "or" needs be true. So the statement is nearly vacuous, because the first part, "brazenly provocative," is obvious, and can be taken as a complement, coming from Bollinger. The second part is acutely false and ungraciously personal.

Bollinger went on to say that Ahmadinejad had a "fanatical mindset" and implied that Ahmainejad's mind was "the mind of evil." What a hack. Couldn't President Bush's former speechwriters get a better job than this?

On his trip, Mr. Ahmadinejad wanted to visit Ground Zero. Why? "To pay respect" he says. "Respect for what?" we wonder. "The hijackers?"--which is what he wants us to wonder. But the New York City police denied his request to visit Ground Zero. I don't know why they made this decision, but score another round for Ahmadinejad. What is this freedom we want to spread around the world? What are we afraid of? Is there anything left there to destroy? And who is petty here?

Mr. A. understands that ground zero is a sacred symbol, and like any sacred symbol, e .g., Jesus, Ground Zero is useful for offending people. American politicians wear 9 /11 on one sleeve and Jesus on the other. Politicians from other countries can wipe their noses on both sleeves.

Another stroke of brilliance: saying the existence of the Holocaust is just a theory. Denial of the Holocaust is nothing new, but treating the Holocaust as an open question is a poignant twist on the logic of Intellgent Design advocates. Next, he will say, "Teach the controversy!" And who values controversy more than Mr. Ahmadinejad?

Russell Beckley
Deliria Records

Ely, NV

Saying Ahmadinejad is telling lies and he is a madman, and calling him a madman, must mean peace is off the table, especially for the chicken hawks? From what I have been told, isn’t he just a puppet for the religious zealots of Iran--so calling him a dictator may be inaccurate?

Religion is the problem, when you have a government in bed with religion, freedoms are hand-picked and selected from using the Gospel, the good book the Koran, what have you. We have had a taste of that here with with neoconservatives using the religious right to support their agenda of death, with some help of twisting the truth or, heaven forbid, blatant lies. Bush has increased the blur here between government and religion, and we may be in for more of the same.

Right now we may be better off, because Bush sleeps with special interests, money of big business greases the palms of our government, so Bollinger may have been under orders, prepping us for war. We must demonize the enemy before we go in.

It could be worse, Bush could be sleeping with the truth and we would have no place to go.

Lee Rossavick

Potter Valley, CA

This was an excellent article. Bollinger's remarks were in bad taste, and he has no business being the head of an important department at Columbia.

As a nation, I think Iran is backing away from Ahmadinejad's original remarks about Israel and the Holocaust. They recently had a television series about the Holocaust, that was, in part, about a romance between an Iranian diplomat and a Jewish girl. I understand that some real Iranian diplomats managed to save some Jews by giving them Iranian passports during the war. Iranian Jews have one member of Parliament, representing 25,000 Jewish Iranians. I believe the latter information was from the CNN special Holy Warriors.

Our only real enemy is Al Qaeda, and, any differences the US has with Iran or Syria are products of Bush's stupidity and passed foreign policy mistakes like the CIA coup. Israel will be very lucky if it survives Bush's "help."

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

This is a brilliantly written piece--clear and powerful. It is a pity that the science (or art) of argument has regressed to such dismaying levels, the regression triggered by none other than the president of a premier academic institution. For all you know, Bollinger's needless revilement has incurred more wrath than Ahmedinejad's prevarications might have. Capturing this, and Vora's observation of how Musharraf was introduced, make this piece a really gripping

Santosh Vijaykumar

Saint Louis, MO

Ms. Vora speaks right to the point and I shared her reaction to the speech. How do you invite a guest to your house and then humiliate and vilify them before an audience, and before they even stand to speak? That kind of behavior is shameful, especially since Mr. Ahmadinejad has made this visit to a hostile land and a campus confronted with hostile protesters, a very brave move on his part. If Columbia has such feelings for someone, then why invite them at all? If you represent a great institution you have to exhibit the highest standards of courtesy, respect and, most of all hospitality. Mr. Bollinger failed miserably at a task that any junior staff assistant in the state department could have handled with ease.

I sadly didn't get to watch the speech but I did read the transcript. I hope that the other two commenters did as much.

There are so many problems with any American criticizing Iran that I'll have to present them in a list form:
1. Iranian prisons? America has more people in jail in amount and per capita.
2. Human rights abuses? America has secret prisons, Guantánamo and Abu Graib as shining beacons of constitutional government, where foreigner and citizen are abused just as poorly, whether guilty or not.
3. Terrorist sponsor? The US refuses to return the terrorist Luis Posada Carilles to Venezuela after he blew up a plane full of people.
4. Executions? Texas just recently executed it's 400th person, including the insane and the mentally retarded.
5. Nuclear weapons? Pakistan and India are both holding on to nuclear weapons, as well as Israel, but we're unwilling to allow the Iranians to have them, why is that? Isn't bin Laden hiding in Pakistan? Isn't Musharaff an unelected dictator?
6. Political imprisonment? We've been locking up Americans and keeping them in isolation on fears that they were going to attack the government in undemocratic ways. America imprisons citizens for giving money to charities that have any affiliation with a designated 'terrorist group'.

This list speaks to the tremendous hypocrisy that occurs when wagging a rhetorical finger at any nation's leaders. That hypocrisy, coupled with a galling lack of hospitality puts Columbia in the worst possible light and makes Ahmadinejad look like the most reasonable person in the room... How ironic.

Perhaps Mr. Bollinger thought that the best way to preserve his sensitive Jewish alumni and donating benefactors was to shame his invited anti-Zionist guest in a public and unorthodox way, and he may have succeeded in that goal, but he more clearly lost any sort of academic or social respect from anyone who truly understands the spirit of free speech and open dialog. Criticism is best left to the questioning period, after the guest has had their full opportunity to express themselves.

I'd suggest someone else at Columbia, someone with some background in Middle East studies or foreign affairs, introduce their next controversial Middle East leader or at the very least handing them a copy of Emily Post's book of manners as reference material.

Nick Alvarado

Houston, TX

I was pleased to read Ms. Vora's article regarding Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia. Although I share most Americans' belief that Ahmadinejad's ideas and policies are terrible, I was appalled to hear parts of Bollinger's "introduction" since he had invited Ahmadinejad to his home, so to speak, and civil behavior would have been appropriate. I think it was simply rude to invite a speaker and then attack him quite viciously. Bollinger could accomplished more by attacking policies and ideas than he did by his personal attack.

Ann Maddox

Santa Cruz, CA

Great work, Jayati. I totally agree that Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia was nothing but a wasted oppurtunity. The fact that Columbia president Lee Bollinger chose to demean an invited guest who also happens to be the president of some country, in his opening remarks, was just plain wrong.

Abhishek Mehra

Lafayette, IN

As a SIPA alumna, I felt intense shame at Bollinger's behavior yesterday. Why invite a world leader if you only want to take pot shots at him and insult him? If you want to debate his ideas and policies, do it in a dignified manner by engaging him in a debate that's meaningful and let him emerge the fool or the madman he appears to be.

So thank you, Jayati, for giving a voice to all those students of foreign policy like me who felt that free speech and democracy took a beating yesterday at our alma mater. Also, thank you for drawing the pertinent comparison with how other world leaders--if they are friendly with the US Administration--are treated, despite their questionable political behavior.

Jayshree Bajoria

New York, NY

I salute Bollinger for confronting this dangerous sicko. That Vora foolishly compares him to Bush is just juvenile. That Vora is not able to differentiate between the leader of a hell-bent theocracy and an unpopular US President demonstrates an absurd distortion of reality. No surprise. That comes from her youth and inexperience, and from taking her rights and ease as a Westerner for granted. As if she, or anyone, would write anything critical of Ahmadinejad in Iran. Bravo for Bollinger. One doesn't have to be a conservative to see how smug the young are.

Ward MacCready

Sunfield, MI

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already stated his Mein Kampf to the world; he is an enemy of the state to all non-Muslims nations. Does history have to repeat it self? (The definition of "un-American.")

Dr. F. Coles

Los Angeles, CA

It is easy to see Ms Vora's passion. I just cannot get over the naïveté of someone educated in International Studies. Did she really expect a debate with President A? She seems to take most of it at pretty much face value. President A can say there are no gays and total women's rights, and it is Bolinger's fault for the introduction.

As long as we are complaining about cowardice in the face of opposition, what happened to the Minute Men when they wanted to talk about immigration? Where was the First Amendment/free speech outrage?

The controversy this kind of speaker raises is often not about free speech. Rather, is it appropriate for that speaker having that kind of stage? And don't say a democracy can always afford to let whomever speak. If you take the time to read what the Iranian national press is reporting about President A., you'll see it is a total fabrication. In fact, many of the international press is reporting how well received he was (several standing ovations, much clapping, etc.). Columbia gave a vicious, cruel, evil man the world's stage at a prestigious Ivy League university, and that was wrong.

America can survive that kind of debacle, but it should not have happened, and in my mind Bolinger at least salvaged a little face with a tough prelude to the Iranian despot's lies.

Mike Moran

Kokomo, IN

Jayati Vora has revealed herself to be an immature and unpolished writer. Rather than report the news and editorialize the event, she used the article as a platform to take swipes at President Bush. President Bush is not a favorite of mine, however his description of the Iranian leader is accurate. He is a madman and the world knows it.

Bill Jones

Long Beach, CA