Posted by
Green Faerie on Friday, September 21, 2007 7:00:22 PM
Back in the fall of 1986, when I was applying for college, Columbia University was one of my "long-shot" choices. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to go to school in NYC? Besides, Columbia's grad school had a fine journalism program, which I was pursuing at the time.
No, I didn't get in but if I had and graduated from there, boy, would I be hopping mad today.
The same school that let a bunch of crackpots use the ol' heckler's veto to disrupt and end a speech by Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist, the same school that would not let Gilchrist come back for another shot at his presentation, is now extending a warm and hearty welcome to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran. He is scheduled to be in town for some podium-poundin' at the United Nations and with his plans to buy some fake handbags in Chinatown and take a transom ride around Central Park cancelled, he'll be giving a chat at Columbia U.
To the so-open-minded-their-brains-are-falling-out crowd, Ahmadinejad is the leader of a country and therefore, he ought to be accorded the same respect you'd show to say, Nicholas Sarkozy or Queen Elizabeth II. What's the harm in letting the guy talk?
The problem is this is the same guy who every other hour threatens to wipe Israel off the map and whose government is looking for the means to do via building a nuclear program. Iran's agents are stirring things in Iraq and training "insurgents" there to lob missiles (that they've supplied) at our troops. Iran is one of the Big Three pimps of Middle Eastern terrorism (along with Syria and Saudi Arabia). This same bozo's government took British soldiers hostage. Speaking of which, some accuse El Presidente of being one of the American Embassy hostage takers in 1979. Let's also not forget his country really does stomp on every civil right imaginable. Iran is the sort of place where men are beaten for extramarital sex, rape victims are hanged, and "wayward" women are stoned to death. Nice, huh?
*This* is the sort of guy one of the most prestigious universities in America wants to provide a forum for.
We shouldn't be too surprised, as outrageous as it is. Columbia is fast gaining a reputation for its virulent anti-Semitism. The late professor Edward Said, infamous for his pro-Palestinian terrorism views, was one of its stars. One of its Middle Eastern studies professors once called an Israeli student a murderer in class.
I blame the decades-old Marxist stranglehold on the academia plus the flush of money from the Middle East--clearly designed to promote anti-Israel and pro-Arab/Islamist views in the academia--for this situation. It won't change unless alumni, students, and trustees raise some heck.
But don't hold your breath. A lot of them have been brainwashed too.