Israel Matzav: Columbia dean: We'd let Hitler speak too

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Columbia dean: We'd let Hitler speak too

As I'm sure you all recall, Columbia University has invited Iranian ~~President~~ anti-Semite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus tomorrow while he is in New York for the UN General Assembly.

Columbia dean John Coatsworth said in an interview with Fox News that if Adolf Hitler YMS"H had come to the US in the 1940's, he would have been offered a platform to speak at Columbia:

Allahpundit is all over this story. This quote - from former President (of both the United States and - l'havdil - Columbia) and commander of American forces in Europe Dwight Eisenhower is especially apropos:

The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so over powering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

Allah also reports that Eisenhower refused to meet with a German general to negotiate their surrender, but that CBS's 60 Minutes - the show that used to be anchored by Dan Rather - has offered to interview Ahmadinejad so that he can speak directly to the American people. Lots more coverage and links at Allah's site.

Webloggin' has also been all over this story. I endorse this comment wholeheartedly:

It is an affront to all Americans that this anti-American, Jew bashing terrorist is allowed to speak anywhere within the United States, let alone be allowed on U.S. soil. Which leads me to the Columbia University invite. Why would any American college allow this maniac to speak on their campus? This is a man, who is President of a country that is supplying arms and funding the insurgents who are killing our soldiers.

We, collectively as United States citizens, need to get vocal when it comes to having anti-American terrorists on our precious soil. We continually allow this when we should not. This is no different than when Hugo Chavez was allowed to speak at the United Nations and call our President el-diablo or the devil. How fitting it is that Ahmadinejad plans to visit Hugo down in Venezuela after he leaves the United States. They both can have a good laugh at our stupidity in allowing foreign leaders to trash American leaders on American soil.

Columbia University is no different. President Bollinger’s reason for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak is so that he can ask him “challenging” questions, such as why the “distinguished” terrorist leader has denied the holocaust and also why he has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. I have an answer for Mr. Bolliger, it is because he is a madman who who hates the Jews. I do not see the need to give this terrorist another platform; it is bad enough that he has a platform at the U.N..

And on Friday afternoon, Little Green Footballs reported that Columbia invited Nazi Germany's Ambassador to the US to speak on its campus in 1933 and sent a delegation to the Nazi University of Heidelberg in 1936.

I'm ashamed.