This is a funny thing to start with. I'm trying to clean up my room, and have this newspaper clipping lying around, I want to throw it away, but I also want to save it.
It's now a little out of date (not right on time, as things in blog-o-land mostly are) but I read this letter in the NYTimes about Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia -- it expressed some of my thoughts:
NYTimes Letters 9/26/2007Ahmadinejad said it best himself, as quoted in the NYTimes front-page article of the day after the speech.
To the Editor:
Columbia University's treatment of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is appalling. It would have been understandable had Columbia simply condemned Mr. Ahmadinejad's ideas or remarks in a debate or discussion forum.
However, not only did the university set the tone for the forum by launching ad hominem attacks, but the school then asserts that the forum was intended for the ideal of open discussion of ideas -- a discussion that Columbia aborted in its infancy.
In doing so, Columbia has demonstrated again the temptation of Orientalism: for us to humiliate and caricature a feared Other, put it on open display, and then pat ourselves on the back for being enlightened enough to make the display case.
Columbia needs to either fully exclude or fully include Mr. Ahmadinejad in its discussions of him. Setting him up as a simple straw man to be knocked down does a disservice to academic discourse. Michael Chen
Mount Prospect, Ill., Sept. 25, 2007
''In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don't think it's necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.''And this is not to defend the man. If you actually read the speech, you will find that much (though not all) of it is meandering and senseless.
He added, to some cheers, ''Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.''
All in all, not worth making a war over.
