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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting Columbia University today to give a speech for the World Leaders Forum. And he continued to get a big New York-style welcome: The Daily News has its "The Evil Has Landed" cover while Assemblyman Dov Hikind told protesters outside Columbia's gates yesterday, “He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake. I call on New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable.”
The press has been swarming Columbia since yesterday - Geraldo Rivera even broadcast his show from the campus. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made some not so unveiled threats to Columbia's state funding, telling the NY Sun, "There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall. Obviously, there's some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of … knowing that this is that kind of an institution."
Still, Columbia stood behind its mission to use Ahmadinejad's appearance to foster debate. Columbia president Lee Bollinger told Good Morning America, "It's extremely important to know who the leaders are of countries that are your adversaries. To watch them to see how they think, to see how they reason or do not reason. To see whether they're fanatical, or to see whether they are sly."
Ahmadinejad arrived yesterday at JFK and was taken to the InterContinental's The Barclay on East 48th Street. In the evening, he spoke at a closed event for Iranians at the New York Hilton; one attendee told the Daily News the leader said, "What do we want a bomb for? Why should we have a bomb? It doesn't help us. Why do we need a bomb? The Soviet Union is an example of a country that had the bomb and still fell apart."
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at 1:30PM. WCBS 2 and WNBC 4 will carry the speech on their websites. And here's a schedule of the protesters from the Columbia Spectator's Ahmadineblog. Also, Columbia campus is pretty much closed off now.
And here's SIPA's Dean John Coatsworth (of "we'd invite Hitler to speak" fame) on CNN:
The Daily News has waged a campaign against Coatsworth -check out this editorial and column by Michael Goodwin.
Photographs: Top photograph of Geraldo Rivera and various Columbia students, protesters by tina.gao on Flickr, bottom photograph of Columbia students outside Columbia by jschumacher on Flickr
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Ahh, college campuses... home of the exchange of free ideas. Except the ones we don't agree with.
That is the perkiest looking protest ever. Even Geraldo looks like an excited schoolgirl.
"He should be arrested"? For what? Is this like when the RNC protesters were arrested for having an opinion?
Assemblyman Hikind should go fuck himself. What a disgrace to New York.
Ah, yes. Free speech, as long as we approve of it first. Why hasn't Sheldon's district voted his arse home yet?
And Hikind really needs to ask himself if his behavior is befitting a politician. (Wait. Politicians have no shame...never mind.)
man, them super jews are going craaaaazie over this.
they're dancing, yelling, singing, more yelling.
OK shut about 2004. They weren't arrested for having an opinion. Get over yourself. Only a complete asshole can see 200,000 marching up Broadway and say there is no freedom of speech in America. If you want to be taken seriously, tone down the rhetoric.
Why hasn't Sheldon's district voted his arse home yet?
Because his district is full over hyper-wealthy limousine liberals and incredibly poor immigrants and project dwellers - all reliable lever pullers for the Democrats? Does anyone bother to run against him?
Where are the "free speech" pens? Where are the tazers?
They should stamp every front page of this paper with a "Fox News" logo. The quality of this news is equivalent to what you would get from a yelling crunked bro after a high school football game out the window of his 1982 Firebird as he sped off to unbury his stockpile of guns to fight the Chinese communists. Watch your step New York, one of the nation's finest schools is turning over the stage to Mussolini II and he eats children.
chills out super jews
Since there is no rational discussion here regarding this, one might want to read Glenn Greenwald's take on this, particularly on Silver's threat to Columbia.
"The Evil Has Landed"
"Go To Hell!"
Fucking embarassing. Almost as childishly pathetic as "Freedom Fries"... almost.
Reductio ad Hitler. People need to quit blowing Coatsworth's words out of proportion.
can't they get the same interpreter as the one on 60 minutes?
I'm more shocked to learn that Geraldo Rivera still has a show.
No such thing as bad PR.
Smartest move by Bollinger and Coatesworth (Bollinger being the decider in all of this)
Coatsworth I mean. ignore the extra 'e' I just put in his name above.
MAKE LOVE! NOT WAR!
Piece of ass to all and to all a good night.
This isn't necessarily about free speech. Amadinejad doesn't have any "right" to speak at a university. That being said, I support Columbia's invitation and think it was the right thing to do to let him speak. I also support the right of protesters to raise hell. And I can understand why Jewish people especially might not be thrilled with a guy who basically denies the Holocaust. But he is much less of a threat to Israel than I think both Israel and American right wing pro-Israel groups would have us fear.
Nevertheless, we can't let all of that get in the way of strategies for relative peace in Iraq. Like it or not, Amadinejad and Iran are critical components to ANY sort of stability in that part of the middle east. We as a nation (and as a city) can either act like a bunch of screaming banshies or we can be more pragmatic and say, yeah, this guy is a jerk, but we still benefit more from an open dialog with him and Iran than the alternative.
That's my opinion anyways. Feel free to disagree...
#19: If Amadinejad is on US Soil, um yeah... He has the the right to Free Speech.
Until 1979 (the Iranian Revolution) there were 100,000 Jews living in Iran. 25,000 remain. The others left and emmigrated to Israel, the US or Europe.
edEx, did you even read the post you respond to or is your comprehension that low? try this: think more, post less.
I don't think we disagree edEx.
What I was saying is that the US Constitution doesn't guarante him the right to speak at Columbia University specifically. Columbia is a private institution and is under no obligation, constitutional or otherwise to provide a forum for any individual. As long as Amadinajad is allowed to speak somewhere, constitutional rights aren't being violated.
I'm belaboring a techincality though...after saying all that, I do think Columbia made the correct decision to let him speak.
Who the hell reads The Daily News anyway?
... oh, right.