Having Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia University "is required by existing norms of free speech," says Lee C. Bollinger.

Here's the text of the speech by Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger as he gave the stage to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday. Bollinger has a lot to say about free speech -- freedom of speech is his specialty in legal scholarship -- and there's no way to tell how much of this is sincere opinion and how much is an effort to shore up his reputation and the reputation of his university. He has a complex task in giving this speech. He must introduce the speaker and justify having him there, but he also wants to appease or one-up the critics who say the speaker doesn't belong on the stage at all.

Let's look:

First, since 2003, the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. 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 or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event never should have happened, that it is inappropriate for the University to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable. The scope of free speech and academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate. As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can, that this is the right thing to do and, indeed, it is required by existing norms of free speech, the American university, and Columbia itself.

Required? Not just an acceptable option? "[T]his is the right thing to do"... "it is required" -- what is the antecedent for "this" and "it"? Having Ahmadinejad speak? You can't give the big stage at a prestigious university to everyone who wants it. Is he only referring to the generic idea that debate required and debate requires opposing voices? Bollinger claims to be stating his argument "as forcefully as I can," and the word "required" is forceful, but, oddly, you can't tell what exactly he thinks is required.

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas." But giving the big stage at a prestigious university is not "merely to listen," Ahmadinejad represents something more than "ideas," and the ideas that he has are not merely ideas that "we deplore in any way." Yet Bollinger denies that giving a high platform to one speaker implies any special respect: "[W]e do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices." Public forum? This isn't a street corner where everyone gets to say what they want. It is not just any "public forum" when you highlight one speaker like that. The university's speech is implied: This is someone worth listening to.

Now, Columbia has its World Leaders Forum, and you might say that Ahmadinejad fits the framework of that speaker series so well that to exclude him would be to betray the commitment to debate. But then define the program and say why this is so. The university's website says: "The Forum brings together a wide range of governmental leaders, influential citizens, and intellectuals from many nations to examine global challenges and explore cultural perspectives," but under the question "Can my country's leader participate?" it only gives an email address. The actual standard to be applied is not stated. Presumably, the university preserves its discretion to make individual decisions, in private, about which leaders will speak and which will not.

Will Bollinger provide a list of all the requests received and which leaders were given the forum and which were denied it? Will Bollinger offer a principled definition of who belongs in the World Leaders Forum so that we can see what speech the university is "required" to present and so that we can know a high-level commitment to open debate when we see it?

Back to excerpts from Bollinger's speech:

[T]his event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.

This is a solid point. I like it. But I want to understand how it squares with the earlier statement that the event "is required." I appreciate the emphasis on the audience's right to receive information, but if it is our right, why are we required? Don't we also have the right to withhold the respect of a lofty podium to individuals whose hateful ideas we abhor and whose actions we regard as murderous? The point must be we wanted to hear him. Say why!

We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament.

So the implication is: This man is evil. This is our chance to study him in the flesh, to understand the mind of evil and to build our confidence in our values as we face up to him.

Now, Bollinger is framing the event and boxing Ahmadinejad in. What we have here is not really a normal speaker that we might provide a forum for, but more of an object of study for you to abhor in person. I present the monster. It's quite unusual to bring in a guest and then introduce him that way. Or is it a World Leaders Forum tradition? Prove it!

Bollinger exercises his free speech rights describing the monster's evil to his face and questioning the monster about why he is such a monster. Excerpts:

Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called “soft revolution”. This has included jailing and forced retirements of scholars....

Why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?...

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated” “legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda....

Will you cease this outrage?...

Twelve days ago, you said that the state of Israel “cannot continue its life.”...

According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent group as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ...

Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and civil society in the region?...

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.”...

Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi’a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?...

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the UN nuclear agency?

Bollinger ends by telling Ahmadinejad that he probably lacks "the intellectual courage to answer these questions." If you know he won't, why have him speak? Bollinger anticipates and answers that question: Avoiding the questions "will in itself be meaningful to us." And performing that avoidance in public will "exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do." And that will be helpful, because it will "only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there." Let's hope so. Ahmadinejad does look bad in the video clips I've seen. I hope that furthers the cause of his opponents in Iran, and if it does, then, thank you, Lee Bollinger.

Bollinger concludes:

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

But it's easy to do better. You make me vomit, you hateful bastard. But you can't do that when you're presenting a man on a prestigious stage. You have to use polite language.

Oh, I'm yearning, yearning to express myself. But I am only I am only a professor, only a poor wee little professor a humble little incredibly prestigious university, which I also happen to be president of... yet I must yearn and yearn to express myself.... here where I control the stage and decide who will speak and who will not...

So, okay, he made the best of a bad situation that he brought upon himself.

IN THE COMMENTS: Smilin' Jack writes:

I wonder if Bollinger himself wrote the invitation to Ahmadinejad...if so it must have read something like this:

Dear Hateful Monster:

I yearn to express my revulsion at everything you stand for, so please come and speak at Columbia. Tell us your deplorable ideas in order to strengthen our resolve to resist them. Then we will ask questions in order to learn more about you, our enemy. But you will be too cowardly to answer them.

RSVP, Lee