Before Iran's president took the stage at Columbia University on Monday, the university's president, Lee Bollinger, sent out an early-morning e-mail message, calling on students and faculty "to live up to the best of Columbia's traditions."
On Tuesday, many critics questioned whether Bollinger had met that test himself.
On campus and in editorials across the nation, on political blogs and throughout academia, there was a sharp division of opinion about Bollinger's pointed introduction of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a man who exhibited "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator" and whose denial of the Holocaust was "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Some said Bollinger's remarks were just the rebuke that Ahmadinejad deserved. Others said they were embarrassing and offensive. And there were still questions about whether Ahmadinejad should have been afforded a public platform at a prestigious university at all.
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, said: "The tone from the host of an event was uncivil and uncalled for. The president of the university had every right to state his differences. That was more than acceptable. But I believe it was embarrassing to the university, frankly, that they should decide to invite him and then treat him in this manner."
But Emily Steinberger, a sophomore who is a spokeswoman for LionPAC, a pro-Israel group at Columbia that had vehemently opposed Ahmadinejad's invitation, applauded Bollinger.
"President Bollinger was caustic in his criticism of Ahmadinejad, but anything else would have been inappropriate and troubling," Steinberger said. "Bollinger repeatedly said that his invitation in no way represented a condoning of Ahmadinejad's worldviews and policies, and yesterday he proved that."
A number of Iranian-born scholars -- experts about the Middle East who now live in the US -- said they were shocked by Bollinger.
"If I as a faculty member had done this in front of my president, I would have been out the next day," said Ali Akbar Mahdi, a professor of sociology at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Mahdai, who is a critic of Ahmadinejad's, said: "I was taken aback."
So was Hamid Zangeneh, a professor of economics at Widener University in Pennsylvania.
"I was disgusted by the uncivilized behavior by president Bollinger," he said. "I don't think it is becoming for the president of a university to engage in such behavior. It wasn't academic."
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS