Israel Matzav

Why I won't donate to my alma mater

Next year will be a reunion year for my college class. As usual, I'll be invited to the reunion and as usual I won't go because it's 6000 miles away. As usual, I will be asked to make a special donation in honor of being in a 'reunion class' and as usual, I won't make that donation.

When I thought there was still hope for alma mater, I used to send back the form saying "if you get rid of Edward Said, I'll donate." Today, I am convinced there is no hope. I've been convinced for a long time, but today I'm angry.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has promised the world he is going to wipe out the State of Israel, is going to the UN to address its General Assembly next week. That's distressing in and of itself, even if a certain ex-President dhimmi says we don't need to worry about Iran, because there is no way they would just lob a nuke or two at Israel. Last night, Ahmadinejad caught the City of New York off guard by asking to visit Ground Zero, the place where nearly three thousand people met their deaths six years ago at the hands of Ahmadinejad's allies and cohorts. The City's police department - which lost hundreds of men on 9/11 - said no.

But Columbia University, from which I graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1978, has invited Ahmadinejad to come speak to its School of International Affairs.

On Monday, September 24th, 2007 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak and participate in a question and answer session with university faculty and students at Columbia University's World Leaders Forum. His appearance is sponsored by Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, which is initiating a year-long series of lectures and events on thirty years of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The SIPA lecture series will include academic experts as well as former officials and critics of the Islamic Republic.

This opportunity for faculty and students to engage the President of Iran came about after Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee at the Iranian Mission to the United Nations initiated contact with Columbia through a member of the faculty, Richard Bulliet, who is a specialist on Iran. The event will be open only to university students, faculty and staff with Columbia University identification and invited guests.

President Bollinger emphasized that such World Leaders Forum events must allow ample time for students and faculty to pose questions that challenge the views expressed by the speakers. John H. Coatsworth, Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, confirmed that the Iranian president had agreed to this format. Dean Coatsworth will moderate the question and answer period following Ahmadinejad's speech.

After six years of trying to convince Ahamdinejad's Iran to give up on its plan to incinerate Israel, Bollinger, whose faculty terrorizes Jewish students who have the audacity to defend the State of Israel, thinks he's going to have a 'discussion' with Ahmadinejad about why he denies the Holocaust and why he wants to incinerate the State of Israel:

In order to have such a University-wide forum, we have insisted that a number of conditions be met, first and foremost that President Ahmadinejad agree to divide his time evenly between delivering remarks and responding to audience questions. I also wanted to be sure the Iranians understood that I would myself introduce the event with a series of sharp challenges to the President on issues including:

· the Iranian President's denial of the Holocaust;

· his public call for the destruction of the state of Israel;

· his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops;

· Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction;

· his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and

· his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia's own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh.

I would like to add a few comments on the principles that underlie this event. Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.

Maybe Bollinger should ask some of his own faculty members the same questions.

At Powerline, Scott sees right through this ploy:

Columbia and President Bollinger are a disgrace. They welcome to their campus a man who is a ringleader in the seizure of American hostages, a terrorist, the president of a terrorist regime, and the representative of a regime responsible at present for the deaths of American soldiers on the field of battle. Columbia's prattle about free speech may be a tale told by an idiot, but it signifies something. And President Bollinger is a fool who is not excused from the dishonor he brings to his institution and his fellow citizens by the fact that he doesn't know what he is doing.

Dr. Sanity points out that Bollinger apparently places no limits on 'free speech', and would give a forum to just about anyone:

Do you doubt that Lee Bollinger would have encouraged the free expression of idea with Hitler; or that mass murderers would have a forum at his university?

Scott and Pat are right: America's (and Israel's for that matter) elite universities are all too comfortable giving terrorists a voice and a platform for spreading their ideas. But it seems to me that some extremists are okay for the elite universities and some are not. Would they invite the Ku Klux Klan to campus? I doubt it. But you can bet that if Hassan Nasrallah ever visits New York, Bollinger will be the first in line to invite him. You see, Arab terrorism is chic because its targets and most of its victims are Jews. And who cares about the Jews?

I wonder what the Ivies are planning for Halloween this year. I'm sure it's something 'cute' and politically correct.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:59 PM