When the free speech denier gets a platform

Helene Cooper of the NY Times reports on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech yesterday at Columbia University.

Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack. He said it was “well documented” that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran has refused “to adhere to the international standards” of disclosure for its nuclear program. “I doubt,” Mr. Bollinger concluded, “that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.” Mr. Ahmadinejad did not directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so though, he said pointedly: “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 added, to some cheers, “Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.”

Bollinger’s opening taunt came across as gratuitous and more defensive than sincere. I got the impression from Bollinger that he was trying to show that he understood the man whom he had disgraced his institution by inviting. But rather, I think, he played into his hands. He allowed Ahmadinejad to come back with his “we actually respect our students” giving him an excuse to pose as more committed to academic freedom than Bollinger. Later on Cooper reports:

“Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?” Mr. Coatsworth asked. “We love all people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged. “We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran.” He went on to say that the Palestinian “nation” should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future. Mr. Coatsworth persisted: “I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no.” Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it,” he shot back. “I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.” For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium.

This would have been a perfect point for a serious reporter to add some facts about the current status of Jews in Iran. Instead, Cooper emphasizes Ahmadinejad’s point and adds an approving exclamation point to it. Well actually, Columbia provided him with a platform. Free speech doesn’t demand that everyone get the same platform. As Michael Rubin wrote

they might want to enable those who don’t have it, rather than celebrate the men who have taken it away.

(via Michelle Malkin’s excellent and comprehensive coverage.)

The NY Times editorial, Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks, of course, gets it wrong. (Interesting, the NY Times editorial describes Ahmadinejad as “bobbing and weaving” and the headline of the news article uses the verb “parries.”)

So we are dismayed by the behavior of some of New York’s democratically elected representatives who denounced and threatened Columbia University for inviting the Iranian leader to speak there yesterday. We can imagine no better way to give hope to opponents of Iran’s repressive state than by showcasing America’s democracy and commitment to free speech. And we can imagine no better way to lay bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s views than to have him speak, and be questioned, at a university forum.

Again, if, say, an Iranian dissident was given the same platform at Columbia as Ahmadinejad, they’d have a point. But despite the jeers of Columbia officials, Ahmadinejad was given a platform that he dominated. One that he didn’t deserve and one that debases the institution that provided it. And of course the Times finds fault with the response to the speech.

Unlike Iran’s citizens, Americans have the right to laugh at leaders, as well as protest Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit and Columbia’s decision to schedule his speech. The threats of possible sanctions against Columbia were an insult to that freedom. In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of New York’s Assembly, Sheldon Silver, warned that legislators might now “take a different view” of capital support provided to Columbia.

Except a private institution has no right to receive public funds. If Columbia has somehow abused the public trust, why shouldn’t the public be able to respond. Punishing Columbia in no way diminishes freedom. In Playing Democrat at Columbia, Anne Applebaum, shows that she gets it.

Ahmadinejad’s agenda, though, differs from that of the traditional autocrat. His goal is not merely to hold power in Iran through sheer force, or even through a standard 20th-century personality cult: His goal is to undermine the American and Western democracy rhetoric that poses an ideological threat to the Iranian regime. Last winter, when he invited a host of dubious Holocaust-deniers to discuss the Holocaust in Tehran, he claimed that it was in order to provide shelter for the West’s “dissidents” — that is, for Western thinkers “who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust.” This week, he declared that his visit to New York would help the American people, who have “suffered in diverse ways and have been deprived of access to accurate information.” Thus the speech at Columbia: Here he is, the allegedly undemocratic Ahmadinejad, taking questions from students! At an American university! Look who’s the real democrat now! … All things being equal, Columbia would have done better to ignore him, instead of feeding the media circus that serves his purposes. It’s not as if he is deprived of a platform in this country: Only last week, he ducked and dodged his way through a long interview on “60 Minutes,” and his pronouncements regularly appear in media of all kinds.

(“ducked and dodged!” Those boxing metaphors keep on coming.)

Nevertheless, it would have been wrong, once he’d been invited, to ban Ahmadinejad from speaking: To do so would have granted him far more significance than he deserves and played right into his I’m-the-real-democrat-here rhetoric. Instead, the university should have demanded genuine reciprocity. If the president and dean of Columbia truly believed in an open exchange of ideas, they should have presented a debate between Ahmadinejad and an Iranian dissident or human rights activist — someone from his own culture who could argue with him in his own language — instead of allowing him to be filmed on a podium with important-looking Americans. Perhaps Columbia could even have insisted on an appropriate exchange: Ahmadinejad speaks in New York; Columbia sends a leading Western atheist — Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens or, better still, Ayaan Hirsi Ali — to Qom, the Shiite holy city, to debate the mullahs on their own ground.

While this suggestion is brilliant, I don’t agree that Columbia had to observe any rules of etiquette with Ahmadinejad. Still demanding reciprocity in this fashion, or asking an Iranian dissident to speak at the same forum) would have undermined Ahmadinejad’s pose.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Ahmadinejad, columbia university.