The Hawk

Issue date: 9/26/07 Section: Opinion

On Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. Before his arrival, he was invited to speak at Columbia University. Later, he asked New York's permission to visit Ground Zero. This last request, in particular, made national news in a matter of days. It sparked outrage across the country that the leader of a nation on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror would ask to see the site of the worst terrorist attack in history.

The more important issue, though, is the debate over whether Ahmadinejad should have been able to speak to the students at Columbia. It provokes fundamental questions of academic freedom. At what point does a university's freedom to teach what it wants and invite whomever it wants to speak run into a city or state's right to regulate that university? Further, to what extent should the views of any enemy leader be regulated in America?

Many people across America called for Ahmadinejad to be barred from speaking to the students. Across the street from the university, scores of people demonstrated against him. Their distress is understandable. They were protesting against a leader who encourages terrorism, says that Israel has no right to exist, and denies that the Holocaust ever happened. The people demanding that the state block Ahmadinejad from speaking, though, go too far. Sometimes the attacks against the university's president, Lee Bollinger, got personal. One man handed out fliers that said, "Bollinger, too bad bin Laden is not available."

These people miss the point. However much we may dislike what he has to say, any university must have the right to determine who it would to speak or what it would like to teach. It speaks well of our country that fundamental academic freedoms remain, even when a reviled foreign leader chooses to provoke a response. Universities in Iran would not have the same freedom.

The protesters' criticisms proved to be unfounded. Before Ahmadinejad took the stage, Bollinger said he exhibited "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." He then challenged Ahmadinejad to answer a series of questions on Israel and the Holocaust and interrupted him when he avoided the questions. The audience at the university, too, proved skeptical of Ahmadinejad's claims. Ultimately, the speech changed no minds and allowed students to see for themselves the irrationality of the Iranian president's views.

People concerned about Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia underestimate the intelligence of his American audience. He faced a hostile atmosphere at the school and was unable to articulate even simple answers to direct questions. If anything, colleges should even be encouraged to invite foreign leaders to their campuses for a round of questions. If this type of presentation were more widely copied, American students might even be able to learn more about the outside world than what they learn in their geography classes.

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