Andrew Marks Columbia University and IAFI Challenges Bollinger and Coatsworth With Their Responses

  • 0

Dear Lee:

I am writing to you with the hope that I can persuade you to consider an aspect of the Ahamadinejad visit that you may not be aware of. I further hope that you will reconsider your position and decide not to welcome Ahamadinejad to the Columbia Campus.

You know me and know that I am not a fanatic. Moreover, what I have to say is not about religion – but rather about culture and society.


Yesterday in Synagogue during the Yom Kippur service our Rabbi lead us in singing HaTikva – the Israeli national anthem – and the Israeli flag hangs in the sanctuary of our synagogue. The connection between the State of Israel and the American Jewish community is a powerful one. Almost every Jew I know in the U.S., myself included, has family or very close friends and colleagues living in Israel.

Recent polls (confirmed by my own personal experience) taken in Israel show that far and away Israelis believe that the most important physical threat to their safety and the safety of their families is not Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc. but IRAN and the man you will be welcoming to our campus tomorrow – Ahamadinejad. This is a very real perception of threat to the existence of the State of Israel, based on Ahamadinejad’s stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Please educate me how inviting this man into our campus (which will likely be considered a sign of respect in the Islamic world) is a first amendment – freedom of speech issue? Ahamadinejad has complete access to world-wide media and his views are well publicized. Those at Columbia who wish to hear him speak have merely to log onto any one of a number of web sites to get a complete dose of Ahamadinejad’s views about Israel, the holocaust and so on. Do you have any realistic hope that questions from you or others at Columbia will make Ahamadinejad change his views – or that by seeing Ahamadinejad live and hearing his answers Columbia students will gain new insights into why Israel should be destroyed or why there really was no holocaust? Or do you think that Columbia students actually need to see Ahamadinejad to be convinced by his performance that he is indeed an evil madman? Or do you believe that our students need to see you debate Ahamadinejad to be convinced that you disagree with his support of terrorism and death for Israel? Indeed, are you actually planing, as your statements have implied, to debate Ahamadinejad about whether or not Israeli should be wiped out or whether there was a holocaust?

Whose right to free speech is being protected by inviting Ahamadinejad to Columbia? Is there no such thing as hate speech that is not protected by freedom of speech? Is there no place one can draw a line and say this person’s speech is too hurtful? Hitler, Idi Amin, the KKK? Would they also be invited to speak at Columbia? Isn’t there a distinction between Ahamadinejad speaking at the UN along with all the other heads of state, and his being singled out for an invitation to speak at Columbia?

Finally, and you need to hear this from me, someone you know and trust – someone who has defended you and Columbia to those who would claim that ours is an institution that is not friendly to Jewish students – welcoming Ahamadinejad to speak at Columbia is going to be hurtful and physically threatening to a large segment of the Columbia community to which you, as our leader, have a responsibility. Indeed, you have a responsibility to protect this group of Columbians (as you do all groups), and be sensitive to concerns and perceived threats to our existence. Ahamadinejad’s visit to Columbia has the potential, I am sad to say, to forever alter the perceptions of many about your leadership and will make Columbia a colder, less inviting place to some. Isn’t this a steep price to pay for what will no doubt be high theatre enjoyed by some?

I urge you to consider these issues in the strongest possible terms. I would hesitate to share these thoughts with you if I believed them to be in any way merely my own concerns. Unfortunately, the concerns I have raised are foremost in the minds of many of our colleagues here at Columbia – there is deep anguish here at Columbia about Ahamadinejad’s visit. I am afraid you are not feeling this anguish and have made decisions that will have lasting negative impact on a University that we care about. Columbia will be here long after we are gone – but what state will we leave it in?


Sincerely,

Andy Marks

Andrew R. Marks, M.D.

Professor and Chair, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics
Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons

I also think it would be important to publicize as widely as possible the statement from Dean of SIPA John Coatsworth of Columbia who invited Ahamadinejad and was quoted by FOX as saying that he also would have invited Hitler. I have emailed Coatsworth several times to confirm that he did say what he said and he has not responded – I take his silence as confirmation.
RESPONSE
Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I would like to share a few thoughts about today’s appearance of
President Ahmadinejad at our World Leaders Forum. I know this is a
matter of deep concern for many in our University community and
beyond. I want to say first and foremost how proud I am of
Columbia, especially our students, as we discuss, debate and plan
for this highly visible event.

I ask that each of us make special efforts to respect the different
views people have about the event and to recognize the different
ways it affects members of our community. For many reasons, this
will demand the best of each of us to live up to the best of
Columbia’s traditions.

For the School of International and Public Affairs, which developed
the idea for this forum as the commencement to a year-long
examination of 30 years of the Islamic Republic in Iran, this is an
important educational experience for training future leaders to
confront the world as it is — a world that includes far too many
brutal, anti-democratic and repressive regimes. For the rest of us,
this occasion is not only about the speaker but quite centrally
about us — about who we are as a nation and what universities can
be in our society.

I would like just to repeat what I have said earlier: It is vitally
important for a university to protect the right of our schools, our
deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes.
Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with
beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even
odious.

But 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.

The great majority of student leaders with whom I met last week
affirmed their belief that this event, however controversial, is
consistent with the values of academic freedom we share at the
center of university life. I fully support, indeed I celebrate, the
right to peacefully demonstrate and engage in a dialogue about this
event and this speaker, as I understand a wide coalition of our
student groups are planning for today. That such a forum and such
public criticism of President Ahmadinejad’s statements and policies
could not safely take place on a university campus in Iran today

sharpens the point of what we do here. The kind of freedom that
will be on display at Columbia has always been and remains today
our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes
everywhere in the world. This is the power and example of America
at its best.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger
-- 

The university’s dean John H. Coatsworth went a step further and told Fox News that the institute would have invited Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to appear before students had he been willing to participate in an open debate. “

Andrew R. Marks, M.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics

Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons

P&S 11-511
630 West 168th Street
New York, NY 10032
tel. 212 305-0270
fax 212 305-3690
arm42@columbia.edu
Research summary: http://www.markslab.columbia.edu/marksbio2.htm
Lab web site: http://www.markslab.columbia.edu/
Center for Molecular Cardiology, web site: http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/cardiology/molecular/
Departmental Web site: http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/physio/Welcome.html
Summer research program for minority students web site:
http://www.spurs.columbia.edu/

Andrew Marks Columbia University and IAFI Challenges Bollinger and Coatsworth With Their Responses

  • 0