NEW COLUMBIA UNIV. ISRAEL DIRECTOR SUPPORTED REFUSAL OF ISRAELIS TO SERVE IN TERRITORIES

New Columbia Israel Director Supported Refusal of Israelis to Serve in Territories - Jared Irmas (New York Sun)

Officials at a Columbia University department established in 2005 to balance an anti-Israel tilt in Middle Eastern scholarship at the university have appointed as its director a professor who signed a letter supporting Israelis who refused to serve in military operations in the territories.

Supporters of Israel on campus say they are disappointed about the appointment of Yinon Cohen as the new director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

In May 2002, Cohen, then a professor at Tel Aviv University, endorsed a statement that supported Israelis who refused to serve in military operations in the territories.

Columbia professor and vice president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Judith Jacobson, said, "I am offended because in May 2002, the Intifada was going on actively, and people within Israel, not beyond the green line, were being killed."

The Columbia search committee responsible for hiring a director included an outspoken critic of Israel, Rashid Khalidi, as well as a professor who supported an anti-Israel divestment campaign, Lila Abu-Lughod.

UPDATE: NEW YORK SYNAGOGUE BOMB PLOT - COLUMBIA UNIV. PROFESSOR INVOLVED?

Mystery in Brooklyn: Bomb factory at Columbia University professor’s home (Michelle Malkin)

The NY Daily News reports today on a disturbing discovery at a Columbia University instructor’s home:

Police stumbled upon a bomb-making factory Sunday in the home of a Columbia professor who specializes in the spread of infectious disease - and are investigating whether he and his roommate have terror ties.

Cops evacuated the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood around the Remsen St. home of Michael Clatts, a medical anthropologist, after finding seven pipe bombs fitted with fuses in his flat, police sources said.

The frightening cache was discovered almost by accident - Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger and sought police help in the street about 1:15 a.m.

When investigators went to the 37-year-old Ivanov’s apartment, they found the bombs, already capped on both ends and filled with powder. One of the pipe bombs was inserted into a Nerf football, cops said.

A 9-mm. handgun, two ammunition magazines, a 12-gauge shotgun, silencers, a bulletproof vest, a crossbow and bomb-making equipment, including a drill and threading machine that could be used to make pipe bombs, were also recovered, cops said.

Clatts cannot be located. Who is he?

Clatts is a medical anthropologist with a specialty in epidemiol.ogy - the spread of disease among large populations.

He is an associate professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and holds a Ph.D. from the Ivy League school.

The senior director of communication for the school, Randee Levine, said she cannot comment on a police investigation.

Clatts’ exact relationship with Ivanov is unknown. Building residents said Clatts once described himself and Ivanov as roommates, nothing more.

Cops became suspicious of Ivanov because he first claimed he had been shot by a stranger but then admitted shooting himself. Fearing another person had been injured at the address, police went to the apartment and opened the door to the bomb factory. They immediately sealed the apartment while they got a search warrant, cops said.

Cops called the bomb squad, which evacuated the building and three others nearby and removed the materials. Residents were not allowed back inside for nearly 12 hours.

Police said last night they were uncertain whether all of the bombs were operative.

Ivanov has prior arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia, including hypodermic needles, a police source said. A man with the same name was deported from the U.S. a couple of years ago for drug dealing, but cops are unsure whether this is the same person, a police source said.

The NYTimes reports on a bizarre twist in the case: Ivanov has confessed to a string of anti-Jewish vandalism incidents last fall. Ivanov, his lawyer told the media, is himself Jewish.

According to a law enforcement official, detectives are exploring the possibility that Mr. Ivanov had planned to use the pipe bombs against synagogues. The official said that Mr. Ivanov told investigators he intended to use the bombs for fishing; but, given his admission that he painted swastikas on synagogues, investigators became concerned he was planning violence. Detectives have seized his computers, and are searching them for clues, the official said.

SEE ALSO: NYC SYNAGOGUE BOMB PLOT?

TENURE FOR A JEW HATER AT BARNARD

Tenure for a bigot (Elder of Zyion)

Nadia Abu El-Haj, who teaches anthropology at Barnard College, has received tenure from that institution.

Much has already been written about her book criticizing any archaeology that indicates a presence of an Jewish kingdom in what is now Israel, even though she has no archaeology experience herself. Her pre-conceived notion that there were never ancient Jews in the Middle East is so overpowering that she essentially dismisses the entire field of archaeology as being hopelessly biased against her version of the truth.

This was the only book she ever wrote, and it seems on its own to be pretty powerful evidence that her scholarship is suspect, to say the least. But what most people haven't caught on to is that more recently she has been doing to the field of genetics what she had previously done to archaeology - to reach the identical conclusion. In an article in American Ethnologist she says modern genetics has disproved the idea that the Jewish maternal line originated in ancient Israel (what she calls "Palestine" even when she is talking about a kingdom that predates that term.)

It is an amazing coincidence that she has looked at two disparate fields, neither of which she is an expert in, and reached the identical conclusion - the Jews have no historic right to live in Israel. The fact that she is of Palestinian Arab origin surely has nothing to do with this eerie juxtaposition of separate proofs by assertion.

Perhaps if her only "scholarship" was concentrated in deconstructing archaeology, a case could be made that she is just doing the same as what other postmodernists do. But the fact that she uses her anthropology background as a blunt instrument to pretend to be a scholar in two separate, specialized fields of which she has no real knowledge shows not only that El-Haj is no scholar, but that she has a purely Jew-hating agenda. It is almost beyond belief that such a person, who can only be described as a bigot, can reach such a level at any university, let alone one as formerly prestigious as this one.

Columbia University (of which Barnard is part) certainly has seen its reputation collapse in the past year.

SWASTIKA FOUND ON DOOR OF JEWISH COLUMBIA PROFESSOR

Swastika found on professor's door at Columbia Teachers College (NewsDay)
A second professor of psychology and education at a Columbia University school has been targeted with a symbol of bias and hatred, police said.

Elizabeth Midlarsky, who is Jewish, discovered a painted swastika on her office door Wednesday morning. Like Madonna Constantine, who found a noose on her office door Oct. 9, Midlarsky is a professor of psychology and education.

The Police Department's hate crime unit is investigating both incidents. No arrests have been made, police said.

Midlarsky's research focuses in part on altruism, and she has studied heroic rescues during the Holocaust. Her profile on the school's Web site says she is currently working on a project on school violence.

Both Midlarsky and a spokeswoman for the school did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The discovery of the noose roiled the Ivy League campus, and students, faculty and administrators denounced the incident targeting Constantine, who has written extensively about race.

A few days later, a caricature of a yarmulke-wearing man and a swastika was found on a university bathroom stall door. Police at the time said there was no reason to believe the two incidents were linked.

Since the noose was found outside Constantine's office, others have been discovered outside a post office near ground zero and in at least four locations on Long Island. Police have said they believe one or more copycats could be responsible. Nooses, charged with symbolism of lynchings in the Old South, have also appeared in recent incidents around the country.

2 JEWISH PROFESSORS AT COLUMBIA TARGETED

Another Bias Incident Investigated At Columbia University (NY1 NEWS)

Police are looking into a new bias incident at Columbia University.

The provost of Teachers College told students Friday that two faculty members received an anti-Semitic cartoon and anti-Zionist letters. School officials have not released the names of the two professors.

Police say the hate crimes unit is aware of the incident.

Earlier this month, a noose was found hung on the office door of an African American faculty member at Teachers College. Anti-Semitic graffiti was also found in a bathroom stall in one of the university's buildings.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROF: GAY RIGHTS AN ANTI-MUSLIM CONSPIRACY

Mideast gay-dar
Joseph Massad, the Mideast studies professor at Columbia whom Jewish students accused of bias three years ago, believes the case for gay rights in the Middle East is an anti-Muslim scheme hatched by Western activists. (The New Republic)

COLUMBIA'S REACTION TO ANTI-SEMITISM ON CAMPUS

Calm Down, It's Only a Swastika (WSJ-BOTW)

This week saw a pair of ugly incidents at Columbia University. On Tuesday, somebody hung a noose from the doorknob of a professor's office at Teachers College, Columbia's education school. Yesterday an anti-Semitic graffito was found in a men's room at Lewisohn Hall, home of Columbia's School of General Studies.

In both cases Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, sent a mass email to members of the "Columbia community." A source from within that community forwarded those emails to us, and they make for a fascinating contrast.

Here is Bollinger on the noose incident:

As most of you now know, a terrible incident of bias occurred at Teachers College yesterday, directed at a member of the faculty. Teachers College is a cherished affiliate of Columbia University with its own president, Susan Fuhrman, to whom I have offered our support and assistance. We may be two independent institutions, but we are one community; and we stand together in our commitment to oppose the frightening sentiments that lay behind this act.

Tolerance and mutual respect are among the core values of our diverse community, and all of us must confront acts of hate whenever they occur within it. As I said last night, an attack on the dignity of any member of our community is an assault on all of us.

I will be meeting with student leaders this afternoon, and other members of the administration will be communicating with faculty and students in the coming days. Our mission as a university includes addressing the most important and searing issues of our time, and we have a particular obligation to respond forcefully to events that affront our values.

And here is Bollinger on the graffito:

I am saddened to report that one of the bathrooms in Lewisohn Hall was sullied with an anti-Semitic smear. It has been promptly removed and is now being investigated.

I want to make two points. When words are the offender, as in this incident, I am reluctant to draw attention to them and will exercise restraint in doing so going forward. I do not want to broadcast, in any way, the message they attempt to send or empower those behind them. Despite the irrational, destructive hatred that persists in our society and world, we do not accept this anywhere at this University. No one among us should feel marginalized or threatened by words of hatred. We are one community; and as one community, we will overcome these hateful acts and hold each other to the highest standards of respect for the dignity and diversity of every individual.

In response to questions students have raised, I also want to reassure you that we have utmost confidence in our Public Safety officials and in the NYPD. Not only do they have well established communications protocols in place when there is an immediate threat of harm; they distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety from incidents like the one that occurred today.

What accounts for the differences in tone and substance between these two letters--expressing unambiguous outrage in the first incident, while urging restraint in the second one?

Although this second email does not mention the noose incident, it seems clear that Bollinger is trying to distinguish the rest room incident from it when he says that in the latter, "words are the offender," and that the police "distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety from incidents like the one that occurred today."

The first of these distinctions rests on a factual error. The Village Voice quotes a police report's description of the graffito: "a caricature of a male wearing a yarmulke above a swastika." (We assume this means the caricature was above the swastika, not that the male was depicted as wearing the swastika.) These cases are alike, then, in that both involve powerful symbols of hatred, not mere words.

What about the distinction between "crimes that threaten our physical safety" and "incidents like the one that occurred" yesterday? As a legal matter, the question of whether the noose constitutes a "true threat" is a very murky one, and one that depends in substantial part on the motives of the person who placed the noose--whose identity apparently remains unknown. One factor that militates in favor of its being a true threat, however, is that it appears to have been directed against a specific person. (We are assuming for the purpose of discussion that neither incident is a hoax.)

But imagine if the situations were reversed. What would Bollinger's reaction have been if the swastika were painted on the door of a Jewish professor's office and the noose turned up in a rest room?

One can only speculate, and we shall do just that. We can imagine that a swastika on a professor's door would draw a stronger reaction from Bollinger than the one in the men's room actually did. But if it were a noose in the rest room, we find it very difficult to imagine such a tepid response.

This is an educated guess based on years of observing how multiculturalism, the regnant ideology in American higher education, works. Multiculturalism conceives of mankind as being divided into various groups (based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) and imposes a complex hierarchy in which an individual's moral authority depends on the degree to which the groups to which he belongs are "oppressed."

The purest form of multiculturalism is what Shelby Steele calls "white guilt." White guilt, of course, has a real and powerful basis in history, as whites actually did oppress blacks, systematically and brutally, for most of American history. White guilt constrains Bollinger against urging blacks to "exercise restraint" in the face of the Teachers College noose. As a person of pallor, he simply lacks the moral authority to second-guess the reaction of blacks to racial offenses.

The relationship between multiculturalism and anti-Semitism is much less black- and-white (in more ways than one). Multiculturalism anathematizes anti-Semitism by white Christians, whether of the Nazi or the country-club variety. But it embraces other forms of anti-Semitism, most notably under the guise of supporting "oppressed" Palestinians against their Jewish putative tormentors.

Bollinger's muted reaction to the Lewisohn Hall episode, we'd venture, is partly a result of not knowing who the culprit was. If it turns out to be a white Christian with National Socialist tendencies, it will be easy to condemn. But what are the odds of finding such a man on an Ivy League campus in 2007? If the vandal is Muslim, or Arab, or black, or a left-wing anti-Israel activist, by contrast, the multicultural moral calculus is much more complicated and must take into account his status as a member of an "oppressed" group.

A final thought: No institution in America has embraced multiculturalism with anything like the ideological fervor of higher education. It's hard to think of any institution in America that is more beset by strife over race and other distinctions among identity groups. Could there be a causal relationship here?

THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS NOT A SUICIDE PACT

Roger Kimball on Columbia's Bollinger (Hat tip: Roger Simon):
President Bollinger's sophomoric conception of free speech is precisely the sort of supine intellectualism that, if consistently embraced, would make free speech impossible. President Bollinger primly lectures us that "It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas," etc. But he is quite wrong about that. By providing a madman like Ahmadinejad with a platform at Columbia University, President Bollinger has in effect welcomed him into the community of candid reasoners. He has granted him a patent of legitimacy that no amount of "dialogue and reason" can dissipate. In this case, "listening" is indeed tantamount to an endorsement. It reduces free speech to a species of political capitulation and renders dialogue indistinguishable from a suicide pact.

“Free Speech for Terrorists?” by Sam Munson (Contentions)
This afternoon, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke by invitation at Columbia University. (See Gabriel Schoenfeld’s post here.) Ahmadinejad has made clear that he considers the U.S. and Iran to be mortal enemies, and that the victory of Iran in the struggle between them is divinely ordained. This is to say nothing of his intention to develop a nuclear bomb, his genocidal attitude toward Israel, his denial of the Holocaust, and his blatant anti-Semitism and hatred of Christianity. In March 2005, the noted legal scholar Andrew McCarthy addressed in COMMENTARY the question of how far American legal protections of speech should extend toward our nation’s declared Islamist enemies. In “Free Speech for Terrorists?” he concludes that the First Amendment is not now and never has been a suicide pact.

BOLLINGER GIVES AHMADINEJAD A RUDE RECEPTION

Tough US Welcome for Iran's Ahmadinejad (SF Examiner)
NEW YORK -
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University to a blistering reception from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like "a petty and cruel dictator."

Ahmadinejad smiled as Columbia President Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran's human-rights record and foreign policy, and Ahmadinejad's statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.

"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said, to loud applause.

He said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant.

"When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," Bollinger said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."

Ahmadinejad rose, also to applause, and after a religious invocation, said Bollinger's opening was: "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here."

"There were insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully," Ahmadinejad said, accusing Bollinger of falling under the influence of the hostile U.S. press and politicians.

"I should not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment," he said.

He did not address Bollinger's accusations directly, instead launching into a long religious discursion laced with quotes with the Quran before turning to criticism of the Bush administration and past American governments, from warrantless wiretapping to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bollinger was strongly criticized for inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia, and had promised tough questions in his introduction to Ahmadinejad's talk. But the strident and personal nature of his attack on the president of Iran was startling.

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader's Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?" ...

Thousands of people jammed two blocks of 47th Street across from the United Nations to protest Ahmadinejad's visit to New York. Organizers claimed a turnout of tens of thousands. Police did not immediately have a crowd estimate.

The speakers, most of them politicians and officials from Jewish organizations, proclaimed their support for Israel and criticized the Iranian leader for his remarks questioning the Holocaust.

"We're here today to send a message that there is never a reason to give a hatemonger an open stage," New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said.

Protesters also assembled at Columbia. Dozens stood near the lecture hall where Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak, linking arms and singing traditional Jewish folk songs about peace and brotherhood, while nearby a two-person band played "You Are My Sunshine."

Signs in the crowd displayed a range of messages, including one that read "We refuse to choose between Islamic fundamentalism and American imperialism."

COLUMBIA UNIV. LAW DEAN SLAMS AHMADINEJAD INVITE

Columbia law dean slams Ahmadinejad invite (JTA)
The dean of Columbia Law School is criticizing the university's decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus.

Ahmadinejad, in New York this week for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, has accepted an invitation to speak on Monday from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. On Sunday, the dean of the law school, David Schizer, joined Jewish groups and others in criticizing the invitation.

"Although we believe in free and open debate at Columbia and should never suppress points of view, we are also committed to academic standards," Schizer said in a statement. "A high-quality academic discussion depends on intellectual honesty but, unfortunately, Mr. Ahmadinejad has proven himself, time and again, to be uninterested in whether his words are true."

Schizer described the Iranian leader as a "reprehensible and dangerous figure who presides over a repressive regime, is responsible for the death of American soldiers, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the destruction of Israel." Still, Schizer added, "I recognize that others within our community take a different view in good faith, and that they have the right to extend invitations that I personally would not extend."

Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, has defended the invitation on the grounds of free speech and academic freedom. Bollinger has pledged that during his introduction of Ahamdinejad he would issue "a series of sharp challenges" on several issues, including "the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust, his public call for the destruction of the State of Israel; his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops; Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction; his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh."

PARODY: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF TERRORISM

In honor of its invitation to the Holocaust denying President of Iran to speak, over the Yom Kippur weekend Columbia University founded a "School of Terrorism." Check it out here.

I THINK I'M GOING TO STOP READING "DILBERT"

HERE'S SOME ISRAEL-HATE AND AHMADINEJAD-LOVE FROM THE "HUMORIST" WHO WRITES THE COMIC STRIP, "DILBERT."

PLEASE EXCUSE THE PROFANITY. IT'S MR. ADAMS'.

The Dilbert Blog: A Feeling I’m Being Had (Scott Adams) (Hat tip: LGF)
I was happy to hear that NYC didn’t allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.

I hate Ahmadinejad for all the same reasons you do. For one thing, he said he wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” Scholars tell us the correct translation is more along the lines of wanting a change in Israel’s government toward something more democratic, with less gerrymandering. What an ass-muncher!

Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a “myth.” F*ck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, and act accordingly. It’s not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That’s Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can blow me.

Most insulting is the fact that “myth” implies the holocaust didn’t happen. F*ck him for saying that! He also says he won’t dispute the historical claims of European scientists. That is obviously the opposite of saying the holocaust didn’t happen, which I assume is his way of confusing me. God-damned f*cker.

COLUMBIA "PROGRESSIVES" AGAINST PROTESTING AHMADINEJAD

Columbia Progressives Against Protesting Ahmadinejad (LGF)

"Progressives" at Columbia (you can tell they're progressives by the ads for Communist literature and Noam Chomsky books) are calling on other "progressives" not to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance: The Columbia Coalition Against the War, 'Open Letter to Progressive Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad'.

They're afraid of demonizing him. "Afraid" is the key word.

We fear the demonization of Ahmadinejad, because we think this demonization contributes to the likelihood of war. In the current climate, with many on the political right in the U.S. and Israel pushing for air strikes, a campaign against Ahmadinejad is dangerous, regardless of the intentions of most involved. A call to action, unless it prominently rules out war, implies military action.

A rally where each speaker denounces Ahmadinejad's reactionary policies and just a few call explicitly for military action will still be perceived, on campus and around the U.S., as pro-war. The right-wing media, from Fox News to the New York tabloids, has already jumped on the event, and will spin it to favor their cause. Conservative organizations with no affiliation to Columbia's campus, such as the David Project, have already signed on to the rally on Facebook, and are likely to distribute hundreds of warmongering flyers and picket signs. The rally will seem to be a sea of pro-war demonstrators — and the more people who attend it and the more organizations that endorse it, the more powerful this disastrous message will be.

A U.S. attack on Iran, which is not an inevitability but is a real possibility, would have consequences just as terrible as the invasion of Iraq. Thousands would die in initial air strikes, and more in the resulting backlash and regional conflagration. The work of Iranian campaigners for free speech, women's rights, and lesbian and gay liberation, and against racism and anti-semitism, would be set back immeasurably.

VIDEO: COLUMBIA DEAN, "WE'D INVITE HITLER TO SPEAK."

VIDEO: COLUMBIA DEAN, "WE'D INVITE HITLER TO SPEAK."

SEE ALSO: Columbia Would Welcome Hitler, a Dean Insists
If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States," said John Coatsworth, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, in an interview with Fox News. "If he were willing to engage in debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him." (New York Sun)

UPDATE: PROTEST AHMADINEJAD ON MONDAY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Dani Klein, StandWithUs

September 21, 2007 718-753-3445

Dani@standwithus.com

Contact: Elliot Mathias, Hasbara Fellowships

917-864-9525

Emathias@aish.com

MASSIVE PROTEST AGAINST AHMADINEJAD AT

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEPT. 24

FROM 1-3pm

(NEW YORK, NY)- On Monday, September 24^th from 1-3 pm, demonstrators will gather in protest directly across from the Columbia University hall where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak. The protest will be held at 116^th and Broadway. Students from New York University, Queens College, Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Yeshiva University, Fordham University, Baruch College and Hunter College are mobilizing in solidarity with Columbia University students who will rally on the campus grounds. This event is co-sponsored by Hasbara Fellowships of Aish Hatorah, StandWithUs, The David Project, The Zionist Organization of America, Amcha, Young Israel, among others.

The protest is in direct opposition to the vitriol espoused by the Iranian president, as well as the invitation extended by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger for Ahmadinejad to appear at the university. Students and community activists will show Ahmadinejad that the young future leadership of America will not tolerate his genocidal threats, nuclear program, suppression of human rights, denial of the Holocaust, and inflammatory demeanor.

For more information on the protest against Ahmadinejad at Columbia please contact dani@standwithus.com, emathias@aish.com or visit our Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6098347650.

###

What: Protest Against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University

When: September, 24 2007 1:00 â€" 3:00 pm

Where: 116^th and Broadway, across from Lerner Hall of Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

UPDATE:

Protests Against Ahmadinejad on Monday (LGF)

MONDAY, SEPT. 24:
What: Ahmadinejad to speak at luncheon at National Press Club by videolink
When: Protesters needed from 11:00-2:00. Come for however long you can.
Where: Washington, DC: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW
Please note: Attendance inside is limited to NPC members, their guests and accredited media only.
Our protest will be held outside of the NPC Building at the corner of 14th and F Streets NW which is close to the Metro Center metro station.
For More info: Contact Meagan Buren at 202-230-7389 or Brandon Gray at 202-857-6627

MONDAY, SEPT. 24:
What: Rally led by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Community Relations in cooperation with United Jewish Communities, UJA-Federation of New York and Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Speakers include Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, (Capt., USNR, Ret.), pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
When: 12 p.m. (rain or shine)
Where: NYC: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 2nd Ave. at 47th St.(across the street from the UN)
For more info: Conference of Presidents, 212-318-6111 or info@conferenceofpresidents.org or the JCRC, 212-983-4800, ext. 161 or info@jcrcny.org

MONDAY, SEPT. 24:
What: Rally by students from Columbia and dozens of other organizations.
When: 12:30 - 3 p.m.
Where: NYC: Outside Columbia University at W. 116th St. and Broadway- only people with Columbia student IDs will be allowed on campus. The main protest will happen on Broadway on public space next to the building where Ahmadenijad is speaking, so even non Columbia people can protest at this event.

AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IT'S 1933 AGAIN

Columbia University and Hitler: Then and Now (LGF)
A lot of people are saying that Columbia University’s invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as outrageous as inviting Adolf Hitler. But 70 years ago, that’s almost exactly what Columbia University did: Columbia “Invites Hitler to Campus” —As it Did in 1933.

Seventy years before this week’s invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitler’s regime. The invitation to Iran’s leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him. Luther represented “the government of a friendly people,” Butler insisted. He was “entitled to be received ... with the greatest courtesy and respect.” Ambassador Luther’s speech focused on what he characterized as Hitler’s peaceful intentions. Students who criticized the Luther invitation were derided as “ill-mannered children” by the director of Columbia’s Institute of Arts and Sciences.

Columbia also insisted on maintaining friendly relations with Nazi-controlled German universities. While Williams College terminated its program of student exchanges with Nazi Germany, Columbia and other universities declined to do likewise. Columbia refused to pull out even after a German official candidly asserted that his country’s students were being sent abroad to serve as “political soldiers of the Reich.”

In 1936, the Columbia administration announced it would send a delegate to Nazi Germany to take part in the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg. This, despite the fact that Heidelberg already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a burning of books by Jewish authors. Prof. Arthur Remy, who served as Columbia’s delegate to the Heidelberg event, later remarked that the reception at which chief book-burner Josef Goebbels presided was “very enjoyable.”

WHAT'S A COLUMBIA STUDENT TO DO?

Boycott Ahmadinejad by William Kristol (Weekly Standard)
A Columbia student asked how he could effectively protest his university's invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak Monday. My first response was to suggest petitions, e-mails to President Bollinger and the university trustees, letters to the student paper, peaceful protest, and the like. All these are fine. But then I had a second thought. There might be one form of protest that would be effective both in showing appropriate disgust for the Iranian regime, and in shaming the Columbia administration: A total student boycott of Ahmadinejad's speech. Let the Iranian president (and the Columbia president) look out on, and speak to, a sea of empty seats on Monday.

The rationale for a student boycott is simple: The Iranian government is directly involved in killing and wounding American soldiers in Iraq. As a gesture of elementary solidarity with those serving our nation in the military--young men and women, many of them their exact contemporaries--Columbia students should refuse to dignify Ahmadinejad's talk by attending it. Needless to say, Columbia faculty and administrators shouldn't attend either. Some of them will. But this is a chance for the 9/11 generation to show a decency and a sense of honor that some of their elders lack. After all, this is not primarily about Ahmadinejad. Dealing with his regime is mostly a task for our government. This is about us. Columbia students have a chance to shame their elders, redeem the good name of their institution, and make many Americans proud. I urge them to take it.

MORE ON AHMADINEJAD AT COLUMBIA

It looks as if Columbia University's invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak is still open. Is University President Lee Bollinger standing up for the marketplace of free ideas or is he a hypocrite?

“Confronting Ideas” at Columbia by Dara Mandle (Commentary)
Regarding Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak this coming Monday on the Columbia campus, the Columbia Spectator today reports:

David Feith, CC ’09 and editor of the Jewish affairs publication the Current, expressed his concern that there was a difference between refusing to suppress hateful speech and actively inviting and providing a platform for it. Bollinger responded that the invitation very well may serve to help controversial speakers, but that the negative is “far outweighed by the importance of confronting ideas and not shielding ourselves from the world as it is.”

And what ideas will the Columbia community confront when it hears President Ahmadinejad of Iran? Denial of the Holocaust and pleas for the destruction of Israel. As Victor Davis Hanson writes on the Corner, “This is not a matter of free speech but of common decency and the most elemental common sense.”

I would add that Bollinger’s move is also a flagrant exploitation of the notion of dialog that universities cherish. Dialog is not possible with a madman (or someone who adopts insane political positions for tactical reasons) as interlocutor. And there can be no doubt that Ahmadinejad falls into one of those two categories. Would Lee Bollinger invite the British Holocaust denier David Irving so that students could “confront ideas” about Auschwitz? What about Jean-Marie LePen, to help students “confront ideas” about racism and xenophobia?

Here are just a few of the criticisms of Bollinger’s decision. But note the absence of criticism on TNR’s the Plank or the Huffington Post. Where is the liberal outrage? Aren’t these people allegedly anti-theocracy? They are when it comes to the far milder effusions of American evangelicals. Isn’t Ahmedinejad precisely the kind of theocrat they should hate? Yet Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, can’t understand why Ahmadinejad wouldn’t be allowed to go to Ground Zero, “[e]specially when free speech and letting even the obnoxious have their say are supposedly central to who we are?” If only “obnoxiousness” were the Iranian president’s primary character flaw.

UPDATED: HAS COLUMBIA CANCELED AHMADINEJAD'S APPEARANCE?

Columbia Says It Canceled Ahmadinejad’s Appearance (Bloomberg)
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) — Columbia University said it canceled a planned speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after failing to reach agreement on the format of his scheduled appearance on Sept. 24.

Columbia wasn’t able to “establish a conversation with the Iranian embassy that would ensure to my satisfaction that the specific arrangements of any such program would reflect the academic values that are the hallmark of a university,” university President Lee Bollinger said in a statement.

Bollinger earlier said he would introduce Ahmadinejad by challenging him on issues such as the Iranian leader’s denial of the Holocaust, his vow to destroy Israel, support for terrorism and nuclear ambitions. Ahmadinejad also must “divide his time evenly” between a speech and questions, Bollinger said.

The university came under pressure during the day to cancel the Iranian leader’s appearance. “A man who is directing the maiming and killing of Americans troops should not be given an invitation to speak at an American university,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and presidential candidate, said in a statement.

OR MAYBE NOT: Columbia Says Ahmadinejad Appearance Not Canceled (Correct) (Bloomberg)
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Columbia University said it has not canceled a planned speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contrary to a Bloomberg News report. The Sept. 24 event will go forward as scheduled, said Robert Hornsby, the director of media relations at Columbia University in New York.

MORE ON AHMADINEJAD'S VISIT TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Columbia's Priorities (WSJ-BOTW)
Next week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's Holocaust-denying president, who has said that "Israel must be wiped off the map," will be in New York for the U.N. General Assembly session. As the titular leader of a U.N. member state, Ahmadinejad is entitled to visit the city for this reason. But he is not entitled to something else he received, namely an appearance to speak at Columbia University, where he will be introduced by none other than Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president.

Yesterday Bollinger put out a statement defending his decision to authorize the event, and it was filled with high-minded rhetoric:

Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.

But there is one little problem here. As Bill Kristol points out:

As Columbia welcomes Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia students who want to serve their country cannot enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Columbia. Columbia students who want to enroll in ROTC must travel to other universities to fulfill their obligations. ROTC has been banned from the Columbia campus since 1969. In 2003, a majority of polled Columbia students supported reinstating ROTC on campus. But in 2005, when the Columbia faculty senate debated the issue, President Bollinger joined the opponents in defeating the effort to invite ROTC back on campus.

The original decision to kick ROTC off campus was the product of 1960s anti-Americanism, but the ostensible reason the policy continues is objection to the law, signed by President Clinton, that prohibits open homosexuals from serving in the military. Apparently some ideas are so odious that they are unworthy of answering "through the powers of dialogue and reason."

So, what is Ahmadinejad's regime's policy on homosexuals in the military? We don't know, but according to Human Rights Watch, Iran is not a terribly friendly place for gay civilians:

On Sunday, November 13, the semi-official Tehran daily Kayhan reported that the Iranian government publicly hung [sic] two men, Mokhtar N. (24 years old) and Ali A. (25 years old), in the Shahid Bahonar Square of the northern town of Gorgan.

The government reportedly executed the two men for the crime of "lavat." Iran's shari'a-based penal code defines lavat as penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts between men. Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty. Non-penetrative sexual acts between men are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are punished with death. Sexual acts between women, which are defined differently, are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are also punished with death.

If the U.S. military executed homosexuals instead of merely discharging them, perhaps Bollinger would welcome ROTC back to Columbia.

Roll On, Columbia. Roll on. (Roger Simon)
As most readers know, those worldly "progressives" [sic] at Columbia University are hosting a speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the Iranian president addresses the thugocrats and parking violators in the General Assembly. Freedom of speech, doncha know? At Columbia it evidently extends to Holocaust deniers and adherents of the belief that global chaos will bring on the Mahdi (Shiite messiah).

I have a question for the Columbia crowd, since Holocaust deniers are welcome, would you allow a speaker in favor of a return to black slavery? I hope not. Well, that's how I feel about Holocaust deniers.

What are the speaker rules at Columbia? Does anybody know? How far can you go? Please leave the info here, if you have it.