Scan the the newspapers, watch the TV, listen for a peep of dissent. You won’t find one. Everyone in the the US government, business community and the media either condemned or laughed at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his speech at Columbia University on Monday.
Indeed, on the TV we were treated to the insane image of witless students taping protest placards to the granite stone inscribed with “Columbia School of Journalism’ as if those very words shouldn’t be the very meaning of free speech and open minds.
It was an orgy of mindless piling on from everyone from the President of the Unites States, to the President of the University to the thoughtless talking heads that preach their safe America-first drivel on evry channel on the digital dial.
Except, that is, for a few at CommonDreams including Ru S. Freeman who, in her article Words Were Spoken, But What Was Said? got the entire fiasco bang-on. An extract:
In Iran, as in most other nations and even, I’ve heard, in some of the more civilized parts of the United States, it is customary to honor a guest with common courtesy if that is all one can muster.
A guest comes in the guise of a speaker, a performer, a diner, or numerous other permutations that embody him or her with special status, but one thing is always true: a guest is invited. An invitation is a communication, expressed both formally and politely, to an individual, asking that they attend a festivity or event of ones own creation. In this case, Columbia University’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, chose to ask a visiting foreign dignitary to grace his campus with his presence. A guest who accepts such an invitation does not envision that they will be publicly humiliated and attacked by their host for the amusement of other attendees.
How embarrassing then that such a thing could occur, at so prestigious a venue as Columbia University, so publicly and at the center of such media attention. How much worse, however, is that not one newspaper in this country chose to point out that Lee C. Bollinger acted appallingly and disgracefully? It is admirable that he chose to invite President Ahmadinejad to speak at his campus, to give a man excoriated by the American government and its oddly un-free press, a chance to state his case. But it is unforgivable that he would choose to backtrack on his initial gesture at the sad expense of his guest, and to the everlasting shame of his country.
I, for one, looked on with disgust. I also took away from the fiasco one new and not surprising bit of information: the President of Iran possesses a grace that neither his host nor the hecklers at Columbia University nor the press in this country nor, I might as well state the obvious, the president of this country can claim. Chalk one up, once again, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ru Freeman is a writer and activist. She may be contacted at rfreeman@colby.edu. This article also appeared in The Island, Sri Lanka.
