A number of thoughtful people were shocked by the lengthy hazing Columbia President Lee Bollinger administered to Iran’s Ahmadinejad Monday in introducing him at the school. Chris Matthews said, "Who is this guy?" then laughed at the length of the gauntlet and said that Ahmadinejad ought to take Bollinger on the road with him, as he made the Iranian president look good.
At a forum the same day at Hopkins’s SAIS for Trita Parsi’s wonderful new book on Iran– Treacherous Alliance, two journalists made the same point. Michael Hirsh, a senior editor at Newsweek, said with irony, "I think it’s generally a good idea … not to tell [a guest] that they’re not welcome… Then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad, which is what he ended up looking." Hirsh said that Prezbo (as he is known at Columbia) created "sympathy" for Prezjad. M.J. Rosenberg of Israel Policy Forum said that he felt "so embarrassed" by Bollinger’s laying out "the American bill of particulars" against Ahmadinejad that he had trouble focusing on the speech.
What embarrassed me is that we are now acting as if the entire world agrees with us, and we no longer are trying to play to an audience… I don’t remember that ever going on in this country. Honest to God, I know Israel well, that would not go on at Tel Aviv University. This seemed almost Soviet to me. Everyone has to carry the government’s line. To the rest of the world, we looked silly. I felt crummy as an American watching.
On Hardball, Pat Buchanan laughed that Bollinger was trying to please his "donors." Having spent weeks at the school working on a story earlier this year, I think there’s truth in that. Columbia’s world is a very Jewish one, and its biggest backers would seem to be party-liners, include New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who created the building that contains Hillel on campus. Bollinger is an eminent free-speech scholar, who distinguished himself leading the University of Michigan, when he originated creative affirmative-action policies. His speech so hurt him that I would like to think that it will mark the high point of the Israel lobby in the U.S. How painful to see a good man so nakedly corrupted.
Related posts:
- Why Columbia President Bollinger Should Be Celebrated for Inviting Ahmadinejad
- Newsweek Senior Editor Says ‘Israeli Lobby’ Is Shaping U.S. Policy Toward Iran
- ‘Patriots’ Owner’s Wife Says Her Sons Could Fight for Israel, Not U.S.
- Columbia profs blast their president’s silence on destruction of Gaza schools
- The Politics of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust Denial
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Your speech shows you… a bully, a man who invites a guest into his house, then abuses him before a cheering crowd.
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross09252007.html
An Open Letter to Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University
A Barbarous and Ignorant Speech
By CLIFTON ROSS
A little long. A little confrontational.
Minor sins.
The reality of Ahmadinejad is the focus.
He spoke candidly, and revealingly. You and I saw the same speech.
"There are no homosexuals in our country" (They were all killed or in insane asylums.)
"Iran values human rights", except for the ? killed in the original revolutionary purge.
The elephant in the room is not Bollinger.
Right Witty, the elephant in the room is not American militarism and imperialism or Zionist colonialism, either. It's not nukes, it's not Mossadegh, it's not the economic warfare on Iran that hardly anyone is even writing about…
The elephant in the room must be a great big rotting wooly mammoth carcass, unearthed just now to herald the caveman tactics of our pro-Zionist state media, who wield a brutish, bludgeoning club on anyone who doesn't obediently submit to the absurd mythology.
Rarely do we have an opportunity such as this to greet a figure of such central and global importance. It is with great gratitude and excitement that I welcome President Musharraf and his wife, Sehbah Musharraf, to Columbia University. …
We at Columbia are eager to listen. As a community of scholars and as students and faculty who come from everywhere in the world, we take a great scholarly and personal interest in what the President has to say. The development in Pakistan over the past several years, from its economic growth to its fight against extremism and terrorism, are vital issues for all of us. Mr. President, as you share your thoughts and insights you will give our students, the leaders of tomorrow, first-hand knowledge of the world their generation will inherit.
"President Musharraf is a leader of global importance and his contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international fight against terror remain remarkable – it is rare that we have a leader of his stature at campus," said Lee C Bollinger, the President of Columbia University.
http://www.distantocean.com/2007/09/lee-bollinger-f.html
Rarely do we have an opportunity such as this to greet a figure of such central and global importance. It is with great gratitude and excitement that I welcome President Musharraf and his wife, Sehbah Musharraf, to Columbia University. …
We at Columbia are eager to listen. As a community of scholars and as students and faculty who come from everywhere in the world, we take a great scholarly and personal interest in what the President has to say. The development in Pakistan over the past several years, from its economic growth to its fight against extremism and terrorism, are vital issues for all of us. Mr. President, as you share your thoughts and insights you will give our students, the leaders of tomorrow, first-hand knowledge of the world their generation will inherit.
"President Musharraf is a leader of global importance and his contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international fight against terror remain remarkable – it is rare that we have a leader of his stature at campus," said Lee C Bollinger, the President of Columbia University.
http://www.distantocean.com/2007/09/lee-bollinger-f.html
Bollinger was a hectoring fool; the whole thing stank of self-regard and a bloated ego. He thought he'd constructed the perfect setting for himself — create a false "free speech" issue that he could act as the liberal savior for (after last year when he more or less pushed out the Lisa Anderson, dean who had invited Ahmadinejad) and then play to his "base" of zionists who desperately need to believe that a new Hitler is rising and that they are physically and existentially threatened by him, by using his vomitorium for a flatulent display of bravado. Now he can enter the board meeting with one or two new allies; I only hope the board as a whole sees what a poseur and a embarrassment Bollinger has become: I think it will be his defining moment, much though he should be remembered better for his pathetic performance during the David Project fiasco .
And don't get me started on Manhattanville.
Richard Witty: yawn.
What also should be noted is that former Columbia University President (and former Mobil Oil board member) Grayson Kirk gave Iran's former "great dictator"–the Shah of Iran–an honorary "Doctor of Laws" degree two years after the CIA's 1953 coup in Iran brought the Shah back to power. And in 1977 former Columbia University President (and former Texaco board member) William McGill again expressed Columbia University's institutional support for the Shah of Iran's police state by giving a Columbia University "presidential citation" to the Shah of Iran's wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi. Bollinger, incidentally, also sits on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate, which often reflects both CIA and Zionist lobby priorities in its editorial policies.
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