posted by perkiset on Sep 25
Although I’ll have to paraphrase this, there is an urban myth surrounding a time long ago when Winston Churchill held the door open for a women whom, it seems, was deeply involved in womens’ rights movement.
“You don’t have to hold the door because I’m a woman” she rudely snipped at him.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I did it because I am a gentleman.”
In his efforts to bring Mahamoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University this week, Mr. Bollinger demonstrated the finest that is free speech and the epitome of what America can be: a gentleman that holds the door, regardless of qualities (or lack thereof) of the woman walking through.
Much noise has been made about Iran’s despotic whackjob of a president coming and speaking in our country – even more so because of the place that he spoke. The outrage seems to be that Columbia is too prestigious of a place for such a thug – and we grant him too much authority and legitimacy by speaking there. But I argue that the exact opposite is true: in demonstrating by example, Lee Bollinger has give the rest of the United States, and indeed the world, a lesson in what free speech really looks like. It was a brilliant move that will, most probably (and unfortunately), be lost on the Fox News Sheeple.
Lee Bolinger:
“…to be clear on another matter - this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.
We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self- restraint against the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.”
Breathtaking. Intelligent and precise in a way that our country now seems to scorn. Completely lost, however on the moronic members of Congress that do not understand the simple principals that they have been elected to uphold and further. Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) for example, made it very clear that “…he plans to follow through on his threat and will now “initiate legislation, and try to get as many people as can see it my way, to cut off funds to Columbia University.”
His position is simply that even listening to people not on the approved Republican list is tantamount to some form of treason. “Giving a megalomaniac a megaphone” is not the right idea – to paraphrase him further.
But I’d argue that nowhere in this event did Columbia bow down and kiss the ground that Ahmadinejad walked upon – in fact, quite the opposite.
At the beginning of President Bollinger’s introduction:
Lee Bolinger:
“It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.”
And finally how Ahmadinejad was introduced and his first question, which is again, breathtaking in its candor and clarity:
Lee Bolinger:
“Let me now turn to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
* THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN ON SCHOLARS, JOURNALISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES:
Over the last two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Axima; and just two days ago Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a PhD in urban planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Teheran, under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country. Let me say this for the record, I call on the President today to ensure that Kian Tajbaksh will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Dr. Tajbaksh to join our faculty as a visiting professor in urban planning here at his Alma Mater, in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. And we hope he will be able to join us next semester.
The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today’s speaker to even appear on this campus.
But at least they are alive.
According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year – 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at least two children – further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.
There is more.
Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.
These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called “soft revolution”. This has included jailing and forced retirements of scholars. As Dr. Esfandiari said in a broadcast interview since her release, she was held in solitary confinement for 105 days because the government “believes that the United States . . . is planning a Velvet Revolution” in Iran.
In this very room last year we learned something about Velvet Revolutions from Vaclav Havel. And we will likely hear the same from our World Leaders Forum speaker this evening – President Michelle Bachelet Jeria of Chile. Both of their extraordinary stories remind us that there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.
We at this university have not been shy to protest and challenge the failures of our own government to live by these values; and we won’t be shy in criticizing yours.
Let’s, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.
And so I ask you:
Why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?
Why in a letter last week to the Secretary General of the UN did Akbar Gangi, Iran’s leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Nobel Laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world’s attention from the intolerable conditions your regime has created within Iran? In particular, the use of the Press Law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system.
Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?
In our country, you are interviewed by our press and asked that you to speak here today. And while my colleague at the Law School Michael Dorf spoke to Radio Free Europe [sic, Voice of America] viewers in Iran a short while ago on the tenets of freedom of speech in this country, I propose going further than that. Let me lead a delegation of students and faculty from Columbia to address your university about free speech, with the same freedom we afford you today?
Will you do that?”
As usual, the right wingnuts will move hard to portray this event in the light of liberal acquiescence to Iran. Then they’ll try to paint this as some kind of dire picture in an effort to assist Bush and Cheney in getting Congressional approval to go to war. Yet again.
Perhaps Mr. Bollinger should make further use of Winston Churchill’s brilliant and courageous oration:
“We have nothing to fear, but Fox itself.” 
