Posted on 09/21/2007 6:00:58 AM PDT by indcons
Columbia University said it does not plan to call off a speech by Iran's president despite pressure from critics including the City Council speaker, who said the Ivy League school was providing a forum for "hate-mongering vitriol."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is traveling to New York to address the United Nations' General Assembly. He was scheduled to appear Monday at a question-and-answer session with Columbia faculty and students as part of the school's World Leaders Forum.
City Council speaker Christine Quinn called Thursday for the university to rescind the invitation, saying "the idea of Ahmadinejad as an honored guest anywhere in our city is offensive to all New Yorkers."
Quinn said Ahmadinejad was coming to the city "for one reason - to spread his hate-mongering vitriol on the world stage."
Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust "a myth" and called for Israel to be destroyed.
His planned appearance at Columbia also was condemned by Jewish groups including the Jewish Defense Organization, which described Ahmadinejad as "the Hitler of Iran."
Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby said Thursday there was no plan to cancel the appearance, though the university dropped plans for an Ahmadinejad speech last year because of security and logistical problems. The decision came after a Jewish activist group expressed outrage over the invitation.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
I’m not sure who brought Mengele into the conversation and I CBA to scroll up but the point many (including me) have been making is that Columbia should not receive public funding partly because they ban ROTC and partly (in this context and conversation) because they are offering their support to a person many of us understand to be a terrorist and a leader of terrorists.
How much Columbia pays him (if anything) is not material. That they provide him with an American platform is adequate cause for concern.
Um... obviously no one heard about the NYTs inviting him for lunch as well.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs
Scroll down.
Ron, thanks for speaking out. As far back as I can remember, though (at least back to my Freshman year of 1978), Columbia has been a bastion of left-wing indoctrination. I rebuff every fund raising call with the same complaint - that they silence anyone to the right of Lenin and continue to promote the academic socialist agenda.
Columbia is also one of the biggest slumlords in NYC. They make a fortune on their private investments and their alumni fund raisers. They don't need government money.
I compare it to the people I see in the grocery store paying for their meat with food stamps, then hauling out a wad of cash for their cigarettes and beer.
Here's how it works, Quentin. If Columbia were to miraculously run out of funds, the researchers who actually do the making life better thing you're droning on about would go elsewhere -- probably the same place the money went -- and they'd make people's lives better there.
So, please... spare me the "for the good of humanity" bull. It's a vacuous and blatantly manipulative emotional appeal. Research dollars are fungible. And Columbia isn't automatically entitled to anything. If they abuse the community's trust (and they have) and suffer financial repercussions (they should), other worthy candidates will benefit and life will go on.
Reverse the whole thing: if six white kids had beat up a black kid because a black kid had hung a "Malcolm X" poster or something like that up....
Not bloody likely, considering how many types of cancer are out there, and yes, we should disregard it because the end does not justify the means morally, does it.
I believe they are taking him out on the town for lunch, woohoo. [rolls eyeballs]
Thank you! I don’t like when people are twisting the facts around to suit their own purposes. :-(
You hit the nail on the head.
I read the whole thing and I am starting to be swayed into thinking this might be a good idea.
Sadly, that’s exactly what MacArthur did with Imperial Japan’s notorious Unit 731 physicians. The U.S. of course never conducted any human experimentation so our data paled in comparison to what the Japanese had gathered. Good chance to get a early advancement in bio warfare over the Soviets.
Well said -
“Free the Jena 6” is absolutely ridiculous - but in the interest of fairness, the so called “pranksters” hanging the nooses should have been punished.
How did this thread turn into the Jena 6 and human experimentation all of a sudden? ;)
Natural tangent since we are discussing morals and ethics, which Columbia apparently does NOT have. ;-)
Alumni should cut off their funding to Columbia, the school of terrorists.
columbia will allow ahmadinejad to speak and he’ll probably get a standing ovation. but, columbia will never allow anyone to speak who is not liberal/communist/progressive/totalitarian. (and whatever else the he&& they call themselves.)
(one wonders what their definition of academic freedom is these days.)
This is a great point. Let’s let the columbian coward know. Anyone got an e-mail address?
A few thousand women bombarding him with used tampons would really freak him out...
Like fighting the war protesters... Thin plastic grocery bags full of fresh cow, horse, or pig manure will burst on impact releasing a nice payload. The looped plastic handles give it a David and Goliath effect.
I don’t know why people don’t think of these things.
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