Ahmadinejad’s Columbia University performance this week only made me sadder. But at the same time the attempts to block his speech raised serious doubts about the commitment of the American intelligentsia to democratic freedoms. With so much deterioration of integrity and image on both sides, there were no winners in this ugly drama.
Let me start with Ahmadinejad. First of all, it’s a pity that the religion of Islam is constantly used as a major political tool by Iranian leaders.
Here we have an Iranian president who starts his university appearance as if he is giving a religious sermon. When religious messages are mixed with political ones, intellectually and morally indefensible arguments give Islam and Muslims a bad name. For example, how can dedication to Islam go together with authoritarianism? Having seen the Iranian president dodging questions about serious human rights problems in his country, the average Westerner could easily deduce that might be the case.
The Iranian regime may not be the ultimate (d)evil that US regime is trying to portray it as (and vice versa). Everything Ahmadinejad suggested was not necessarily wrong. His criticism about the relentless efforts on the part of the great powers to dominate the Middle East and the world, including nuclear affairs, is understandable. Nevertheless, no matter how convincing your arguments are on some strategic issues, your credibility immediately melts away when you say things like ‘In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,’ that is, in the US. Even kids laugh at you. And Columbia students actually did.
Human rights restrictions, as in the case of homosexuals in Iran, are indefensible in today’s world. Let alone dismissing sexual persecution, denying the very existence of a group is even more serious. And combine that with the denial of Jewish genocide. True, Ahmadinejad backed away somewhat from his earlier comments implying the Holocaust did not occur at all. Instead, he called for continued research on the topic. Fine, but indifference to or disrespect for the sufferings of European Jewry in the mid-20th century should not be a norm for any such future study.
Now given the denialist attitude on issues like those above, how can the Iranian president convince the world that he is not concealing nuclear bomb intentions? Iranian leaders have only been bolstering their adversaries with their own statements and behavior. I don’t understand why critics of the Iranian regime in the US, first and foremost the so-called “Israel lobby,” were so vehemently trying to obstruct his speech at Columbia University. With an enemy spokesman like Ahmadinejad, who needs a friend?
The pressure on university administration was heavy, and I heard many threats of depriving the school of Jewish donations. We are talking about a university in New York -- a rich, Jewish-dominant city -- and money matters for any academic institution. Add the “patriotic” media coverage, and I was not surprised by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s unusually harsh “welcoming” remarks, calling his guest a “dictator.” That was a low moment for US academic freedoms because it showed money and pressure can buy and influence ideas, not to mention that publicly insulting a guest is indefensible. I’m sure in the university’s invitation letter they didn’t address President Ahmadinejad saying “Dear Dictator.”
Columbia University was not alone in the “insulting guests” department. Last week Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II’s scheduled appearance at Georgetown University, another prestigious US academic institution, was “postponed” at the last minute. I understand there has been a lot of pressure from the Armenian diaspora, and the university wanted to play it safe. What makes Georgetown University’s behavior look even more inappropriate is the fact that their guest was not a controversial political figure but a respectable religious leader.
The US is more at risk of destruction by actions suppressing free discussion than by a foreign nuclear bomb. Hindering different ideas will only erode the foundation of this exemplary democracy. We have seen it on the road to the war in Iraq. We are now seeing it on the road to war with Iran. Yes, the same groups who made it publicly impossible to argue against a war against Saddam Hussein’s regime are doing the same for Ahmadinejad’s regime. Unsurprisingly the “Israel lobby” tops the list again. No wonder CBS anchor Katie Couric complained that the media and American people were misled before the Iraq war, while speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Although I now see a relatively cautious approach from the media on a possible war with Iran, the war propaganda machine is still working quietly but effectively. The smear campaign against Ahmadinejad during his New York visit was a product of it. Many observers think US Congress resolutions that call for a labeling of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is another step laying the groundwork for the war that the vice president and his nationalist-Zionist “neocon” network want so badly.
It’s a pity Middle East peace requires reasoning from people like Bush and Ahmadinejad. If the US war lobby becomes successful at suppressing channels of public opinion, 2008 may very well be a year of heightened tensions with Iran.
