No kudos to Columbia from me
I don’t wish to be impertinent here, especially since we Americans have just completed a hearty round of self-congratulation for being so committed to free speech that we can even make room for the reprehensible Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the bully pulpit. Still, I have to ask:
Isn’t it just a tad impolite to invite somebody to your home — or in Ahmadinejad’s case, to Columbia University — and then insult him at length as you introduce him to the other guests?
If he’s that awful a fellow, why invite him at all? A commitment to free expression doesn’t require you to turn over the auditorium of a major Ivy League institution to anyone who wanders through town and wants to speechify on this or that. You support free speech simply by agreeing that you won’t get in the way when somebody decides to have their say on a topic. You don’t have to provide him or her with a microphone and a warm place out of the rain and cold. If you think Ahmadinejad is so vile that you have to essentially apologize to the audience for even having him in the house, then perhaps you should have simply suggested that he avail himself of the same free-speech forum shared by countless other New York City nutjobs: a milk crate on the street corner of his choice.
That was just one of the things that puzzled me about Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia two days ago. Another was the hollow sound of the university’s justification for inviting the Iranian president (who solicited the chance to appear, by the way). One university dean explained it this way: “Opportunities to hear, challenge, and learn from controversial speakers of different views are central to the education and training of students for citizenship in a shrinking and dangerous world.” That’s all well and good, but I’d place a little more stock in such soaring declarations of principle if Columbia had ended his 60s-era ban on campus ROTC programs by now — which it hasn’t, despite formal requests. A university that decides that Ahmadinejad can be tolerated on campus but that the U.S. military cannot is an institution with seriously skewed values.
But Columbia’s worst transgression in this matter, transcending even bad manners and false piety, was that it muffed the opportunity to create a true marketplace of ideas. Why turn over the stage to Ahmadinejad alone? Columbia could have told him that the invitation came with a condition: That Ahmadinejad agree to appear onstage with a panel of smart, informed, skilled debaters, whose job it would be to pose tough questions and press for specific answers. Just the thought of Christopher Hitchens having a shot at the guy made me quiver with anticipation. (A writer for Slate was equally enchanted with that prospect.)
The simply beauty of that idea is that free expression genuinely flowers in that kind of situation. Better yet, you can skip the insulting warm-up and let your guest’s reputation be stained by his own hand.