Not Bolllinger’s first rodeo, but it certainly was his best. “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” “Frankly and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these q…

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…

As bad as we have gotten, I’m still confident we are still above needing ettiquette lessons from ME gov’t officials. Besides, he’s a head of state addressing a civilian institution. The formalities you can expect at a state dinner don’t come with that.

Yet the military is banned while the university insists it is still entitled to federal monies. Ahmedinejad only adds to the irony and, dare I say, hypocrisy.

Not to any sense of surprise!

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But stating as a foregone conclusion that the man is a “petty dictator” and “foolish” was rather odd, IMO.

We hear that all the time about Bush. And it would have been right at home being said about Bush before the UN General Assembly.

And f***ing how. It was weird to actually have knowledge of how this was going to go down, and to see how stupid so many people are. OK, not weird, just another day on the Web.

It makes me wonder what people mean when they say we should engage in diplomacy with Tehran. I assume people realize this isn’t the way diplomacy is done, so how would that work? Either you feel that a person is someone you can have a respectful dialogue with (regardless of differences) or you don’t. Personally I think it’s the latter with Ahmanedijhad, but I still say that no matter what your opinion on that, you can’t try to have it both ways.

He should have trusted his students and their questions to reveal Ahmadinejad’s true nature to the world. This was a golden opportunity to escape the media hype which surrounds the Iranian president,and get him to defend his more outrageous statements on the record.
As it is it was illuminating that
h retreated from Holocaust denial, and stated his delusionary positions
about homosexuality and women’s rights in Iran. That is an education that money can’t buy.

How would we react if Pres. Bush were at the Sorbonne to make a speech, and the host kicked things off by blaming him for Iraqi civilian deaths?
Eiither extend a public platform to someone in a dignified way or don’t do it at all. Asking tough questions is NOT the same as making bombastic remarks and characterizations. The differece, like the essence of diplomacy, is something that too many Ameticans can’t seem to comprehend.

We throw away every chance that comes along to demonstrate the difference between dmocracy and a dignified treatment of issues on on hand with the despotic and lying methods of our opponents (and guests).
Instead, the president of Columbia U and much of the public chose to imitate those we hate and deride. Looking form the outside, it becomes hard to tell who is weating the white hat in terms of grace vs hypocrisy.

Ahmadinejad is quite capable of making a fool of himself on his own, when being asked appropriate questions. There was no need to give him competion in that area and thus lose the edge in evident rationality and dignity.

HOW you play the game matters a whole, whole lot.

I did not realize that free speech requires a military presence on the campus.

The concept of free speech goes beyond mere speakilng at a podium. And the banning of ROTC extends to recruiting as well, which certainly does involve speaking at a podium.

The irony is that the military has no say about the DADT policy because it is federal law. Yet the military is banned while the university insists it is still entitled to federal monies. Ahmedinejad only adds to the irony and, dare I say, hypocrisy.

Like I said, how is it ok to, at the same time, give the podium to one who is essentially responsible for executing gay people, while at the same time denying the podium to those forced by the US government to adhere to a policy of discrimination – all the while receiving money from that government? If you can justify that, then please, let’s hear the argument. My preference is that both should be allowed to speak.

And there’s a larger issue as well. The perception among some is that the military is overly representative of “red state” interests and that it doesn’t accurately reflect the American political melting pot. There is some merit to that argument, but it is not really surprising when one looks at the universities that have ROTC programs and those that don’t. The northeast, for example, has so few ROTC programs that it is a negligible source of officers for the military. That is a serious problem.

Not so much the ROTC, but the fact that Columbia’s administration went to the mat to defend the leader of a repugnant regime’s right to speak on campus…yet has been not so quick to defend the right of conservatives to speak on campus.

Case in point, in the wake of the Minutemen fiasco, the administration’s solution to intimidation delivered by Leftists on campus against campus student Republicans inviting conservative speakers has been to restrict the number of people allowed to listen to conservative speakers.

University administrations across the United States, and also in Canada, the UK and Europe, have similarly been reluctant – and sometime refusing – to defend speakers supporting Israel.

What is the difference? Is it the point made by that infamous Kos diarist yesterday – supposedly a Jewish lesbian – who declared her crush on Ahmadinejad because of his attacking Bush?

Are speakers to be defended on university campuses only when they are leftist or anti-American? Columbia’s example, and that of numerous other administrations, suggests this is the case.

“Yo, come here and say that to my face…”

As a next step I would like to see Bush answering questions from students of Tehran University.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in N.Y. today delivering a speech at Columbia University. Before the speech Columbia University President Lee Bollinger ripped into Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “going through a long list of do…

Perhaps I am unable to see how not having an ROTC on campus while allowing foreign diplomats (with not all of whom are we in good relations) to speak at events is a contradiction.