by Jerry Gordon

Word broke that evening that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will seem at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum sponsored by the School of worldly and Public Affairs (SIPA) on Monday, September 24th. certain adequate when I checked the program’s website, I found that entry.

Monday, September 24, 2007, 1:30–2:30 p.m.

Roone Arledge Auditorium, Alfred Lerner Hall, 2920 Broadway

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Co-sponsored by the School of worldly and Public Affairs

A keynote address followed by a question and reply session with the audience.

Moderator John H. Coatsworth, Acting Dean, School of worldly and Public Affairs
Registration is called for.

Now, last year, former SIPA dean Lisa Anderson had the mad Mahdist teed up for a talk on erev Rosh Hashanah. She got into an academic hissy fit with President Bollinger, when shield couldn’t be guaranteed and promptly up and resigned her position as Dean considering academic freedom of speech was ‘violated’ in the breach.

President Bollinger in his remarks last year on September 21, 2006 said:

I said last night as that story developed that I find President Ahmadinejad’s stated beliefs to be repugnant, a view that I’m certain is widely shared within our university community. I have no doubt that Columbia students and faculty would use a truly open exchange to challenge President Ahmadinejad sharply and are fully capable of reaching their own independent conclusions about his claims.

Let me additionally repeat from my earlier statement today my core belief that the example of freedom we set here in the United States , and particularly at American universities, is the greatest long-term threat to the current Iranian leadership and most energetic weapon against such fundamentalist regimes. From what I understand, most Iranian students would dearly love the kind of freedom American students have to

live, learn, and publicly challenge both their own government and foreign leaders in forums like ours.

Columbia/Barnard Hillel Israel Va’ad put out an newsletter watchful tonight drawing attention to President Bollinger’s remarks and challenge:

Ahmadinejad’s views on Israel, Women, homosexuals and his denial of the Holocaust have been called “repugnant” by many leaders, including our own President Bollinger.

The event is surely a contentious one and pressing for the entire
Hillel community. We wanted to heads up you to that and give you the
opportunity to register for the event so that we can all be there
to challenge Ahmadinejad on his objectionable views.

Given the fact that it will be held in the Roone Arledge Auditorium in the Lerner Center on the Morningside Heights Campus Ahmadinejad will presumable have lots of defense. That’s assuming the Iranian legation can meet the minimum protection requirements of the NYPD and Columbia safety measure for the controversial leader. Or perhaps, like last year, he will be a ‘no show’.

Either way, Ahmadinejad has already caused a media stir in Manhattan with his attendance at the U/N. General Assembly and a desire to visit the hallowed sacred ‘ground zero’ of 9/11.

As talk radio host Dan Lovolo of WDRC in Hartford who interviewed Ken Timmerman that afternoon about the Ahmadinejad desire to visit hallowed ‘ground zero’ commented: “I guess that’s it for any presidential aspirations for Mayor Bloomberg.â€?

All that consternation considering America’s and Israel’s enemy leader and arch holocaust denier is in the Big Apple. Next, we’ll probably see a photo op of the infamous Neturei Karta chassids meeting with him ‘wreathed in an aura� of light-just like last year on the podium at the U.N. General Assembly.

Ahmadinejad, Columbia University, News, Opinion, World Leaders Forum

Original post by Jerry Gordon