The world, inverted
Columbia University will host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next week, the man who “personally brought to a close the infamous Holocaust deniers’ conference in Tehran” just a little while ago. Bill Kristol makes a point about the American academy today:
Columbia University announced that next Monday, September 24, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak and participate in a question and answer session with university faculty and students at Columbia…Columbia University will host the president of a terrorist regime which is right now responsible for the deaths of American soldiers on the field of battle. Indeed, this distinguished guest, who is so honoring Columbia by his presence, will be introduced by no one less than the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger…
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.
In addition to its ROTC prohibitions, Columbia of course has a stringent No Smoking policy, perhaps because some universities think they have a moral obligation to keep students away from noxious fumes as well as noxious ideas. Evidently Mr. Ahmadinejad is thought to omit neither.
The world is upside down. The merely annoying as well as the good and useful are forbidden, while the devil himself would be feted and welcomed in the name of dialogue. In what sense are our universities institutions of higher learning?