September 25th, 2007 by Manila Ryce
On Sunday, President Ahmadinejad said that the American people have been denied “correct information”. Unfortunately, Lee Bollinger’s introduction the next day proved just that. Before his speech at Columbia, Ahmadinejad said, “The US is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions.”
By passing Neocon and Zionist propaganda off as academically valid points of contention, President of Columbia University Lee Bollinger denounced the President of Iran with an introduction wrought with misinformation and character assassination. Perhaps he thought he was auditioning for Condi’s job. This incident was even more of an affront to free speech and free thought on college campuses than the incident with the tasered student at John Kerry’s speech simply due to the fact that this hostile attack came directly from the president of the university and not just a group of campus police, which you could argue do not represent the academic establishment.
Bollinger was more interested in hurling insults and getting the audience to join him against the speaker than in providing a forum for discussion. He attempted to shape the opinion of his audience by leaving out certain bits of information which ran contrary to his political agenda. Bollinger also stated outright lies, such as the mistranslation that the President of Iran called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, and pretended it was a direct quote. It’s also rather telling that nearly all of the objections posed to Ahmadinejad were concerning Iran’s relationship with Israel, not its relationship with America.
It’s inexcusable for a professor like Bollinger to pepper unverifiable and utterly false information in with true offenses like public execution and the oppression of women and gays. Though there are valid human rights violations to be addressed, it’s safe to assume that the same level of disrespect would not have been delivered to Ahmadinejad had he been a greater criminal like Blair, Olmert, or even Bush. Judging by the applause the Iranian President received from the audience during his speech, it’s safe to say that a fair percentage of students were not swayed by his bias.
The rest of the videos are embedded below the fold. By the way, Ahmadinejad’s speech is pretty boring and uncomfortably religious in nature to our secular Western ears. He does start to raise some good points about sanctions and nuclear rights around video 5 or 6, but the beginning is fairly long and painful.
Bollinger’s Introduction
Part 1 of 9
Read the rest of this entry »
Two hours before Troy Davis was scheduled to die, the U.S. Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution.
Israel has decided to continue assassinating suspected Palestinian fighters in Gaza. The practice has been condemned by human rights groups not only because Israel is basically executing people without trial, but because the process also puts innocent Palestinian civilians in the line of fire. Israeli officials say the extrajudicial killings are necessary to stop unguided rocket attacks.
Taha Yassin Ramadan, Iraq’s former vice-president, was hanged before dawn on Tuesday for his role in the killing of 148 Shia Iraqis in Dujail, an official in the prime minister’s office said.