davideagle.org: Free Speech?

Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, opened the speech by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with a series of critical and inflamatory remarks directed towards the president. You can read his remarks here.

Apparently, as a compromise with many who violently opposed Ahmadinejad's coming to Columbia, Bollinger agreed to open the speech by asking these hard questions. But, his remarks go beyond simply asking hard questions, and degenerate to the point of name calling. He in fact succumbs to several tactics (unqualified, inflamatory statements made for attention-grabbing purposes) that he accuses his opponent of using.

Ahmadinejad responded quite eloquently to Bollinger's opening tirade by asking:

In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.

He has a good point. Bollinger says that the invitation to Columbia was done as an expression of the American ideal of free speech. But, in his opening remarks he displays a remarkable attempt to subvert the principles of free, open, respectful debate.

For the President of a preeminent American University to make these kinds of remarks is for me a sad commentary on the loss of the University's goal of shaping and forming disciplined minds. It speaks of the need to de-politicize the role of University. Here the words of Bollinger are relevant:

In universities, we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power. We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds. And to do this we must have the most full freedom of inquiry.

I couldn't agree more. I just wish that you would have displayed this same kind of commitment to discovering the truth through spirited dialogue, rather than resorting to politicized, rhetoric aimed at your opponent's character rather than the larger issues facing human civilization.