From: Samuel Schacher <sms2@columbia.edu>
Date: September 20, 2007 3:26:11 PM EDT
To: worldleaders@columbia.edu
Subject: Invitation to Ahmadinejad
To Whom It May Concern:
In the name of free speech, some members of the Columbia community
invited the president of Iran to speak at Columbia University. However,
most members of the Columbia community who would be in the audience are
denied access to his speech. Since when does a hand-picked audience
represent “free speech” on campus? If some one controversial is to be
allowed to speak on campus then it is inexcusable to limit the audience
participation. If security concerns are the major cause for reducing
access to most members of the University community, then the invitation
should be revoked completely because of security concerns. Change the
policy and have more participation by the Columbia community. Otherwise
cancel the visit.
Sincerely,
Samuel Schacher PhD
Professor
Center for Neurobiology & Behavior
Columbia University College of P & S
NYS Psychiatric Institute
1051 Riverside Drive/40 Haven Avenue
Rm 826 Kolb PI Annex
New York, NY 10032
Tel: 212-543-5292; Fax: 212-543-5797
**************
Dear Judith,
I would like to voice my agreement with Professor Schacher’s letter. He
is absolutely right: if Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia is covered by
the principle of free speech, participation of the Columbia community
should be covered by it too. Six other presidents, some of them
controversial in some people’s view, are visiting Columbia next week,
and registration for five of them is available, and for the sixth is
full (not restricted!).
Sincerely,
Irina Reyfman
Professor
Graduate Placement Adviser
Department of Slavic Languages
Columbia University
Phone (212) 854-5696
Fax (212) 854-5009
********************
Sept 21 2007
hebrew University
School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
And Center for Injury Prevention
Genocide Prevention Program
Mr Lee Bollinger
President of Columbia University in the City of New York
Via Webmaster@columbia.edu
Subject: Columbia: Tragedy Repeated Becomes Farce
Dear Mr Bollinger
As an alumnus of Columbia College (1959), I am writing to express my
belated congratulations for your leadership in fighting the recent
proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions. But the reason for
this letter is to express my relief over the cancellation of the
invitation to President Ahmadinejad of Iran to speak at Columbia. The
invitation was grotesque, obscene and disgusting…and much remains
unsettled.
More fundamentally, it remains unclear what there is in Mr Ahmadinejad’s
record as an inciter to genocide, a Holocaust denier, and promoter and
supporter of genocidal terror and oppressor of his own people which
qualified him as a “renowned intellectuals and cultural icon”, –to use
the phrase attributed to the Dean who invited him–unless we were to
accept the norms and values of Dr Joseph Goebbels-who himself was an
intellectual and cultural icon of sorts. Using these norms, the
University would have invited Adolph Hitler -he wrote an iconic best
seller-Mein Kampf–in the early 1920’s. (Actually, Columbia did
something as bad or worse: it sponsored a full page ad in the NY Times
on behalf of eugenics, signed by many professors from Columbia, Harvard,
Hopkins and the Museum of Natural History). We should be grateful that
the expressions of outrage in Columbia and the city of New York, most
movingly by Councilwoman Christine Quinn, and many others, prevented
another fiasco at Columbia.
In Feb of 2006, the International Association of Genocide Scholars
(www.iags.org) and GenocideWatch (www.genocidewatch.com) recommended
condemning Mr Ahmadinejad for his incitement to genocide and Holocaust
denial, based on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Code and
the precedents of the Rwandan genocide. A subsequent petition by
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (www.scholarsforpeace.org)
endorsed this resolution in more expanded version. In June 2007, the US
House of Representatives voted 411 to 2 to recommend procedures for
initiating an indictment of President Ahmadinejad for incitement to
genocide and Holocaust denial. (www.thomas.loc.gov), and a parallel
resolution is now under review in the US Senate. In the light of Mr
Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements, it is outrageous that Columbia
University-or for that matter, any place— should give an official
platform to a head of state who has been inciting to genocide, genocidal
terror and Holocaust denial. Would Columbia have invited the Rwandan
journalists and intellectuals who were convicted of inciting to genocide
in that country? It seems that the NYC Fire and Police Departments, in
refusing Mr Ahmadinejad’s request to visit Ground Zero, showed more
common sense than Columbia.
I believe there is something fundamentally wrong-indeed pathologically
so– about Columbia’s failure to define the standards for determining
who it invites to speak on the campus and who it does not, or worse, to
use standards divorced from fundamental principles of ethics and
decency. I submit that the record suggests that Columbia has no
standards, or worse, if it does, they are morally flawed. The following
episode is my evidence for this statement.
In 2004, I met Rev Jewelnel Davis, the University Chaplain, via
Professor Jacob Neusner, of Bard College, and gave her a video copy of
the film, Two States of Mind, From Tel Aviv to Ramallah, a documentary
which explored, with sensitivity, humor, thoughtfulness and tact, some
of the emotional subtexts pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict-as mirrored in the tensions of a complex relationship between
two women who brought together to navigate a vehicle as part of the
motor car race for peace in the Saharan desert. I suggested showing the
film in some kind of interfaith meeting on campus in Earl Hall, and Rev
Davis graciously passed it on. I admit to a bias towards the film, since
its Director, Shira Richter, is my daughter, and we are proud of her.
The film has been shown in Israel, to many joint Jewish-Arab meetings,
many women’s groups, and a conference in Turkey sponsored by an
Israeli-Palestinian think tank, and around the world-Berlin, London,
Cuba, all over India, many TV stations– and has won many prizes and
awards and favorable reviews. Even so, and after an initially positive
response from Columbia, I received an email from someone in the
administration saying that the film would provoke controversy, and
therefore was considered unsuitable for Columbia students, and could not
be shown. There also was a problem with some trivial expenses.
As a Columbia alumnus, I would like to receive an answer to the
following question: What are the standards for iconic cultural and
intellectual achievement which led the University to invite Mr
Ahmadinejad to speak -twice-in 2006 and 2007, but to ban Ms Richter’s
film in 2004? Since when is incitement to genocide and Holocaust denial
more “cultural and intellectual” than a thoughtful film which honestly
probes how a political conflict penetrates the emotional interactions
between an Israeli and a Palestinian woman? And what were the sums
Columbia was willing to expend to cover the costs of his visit?
It is my understanding that Professor Richard Bulliet, a distinguished
member of the Columbia faculty in interested in promoting
Islamo-Christian dialogue (why not Islamo-Christian-Jewish-Hindu
dialog?) orchestrated the invitation to Mr Ahmadinejad, with a view to
clearing up misunderstandings on the nature of the Islamic Revolution in
Iran. As someone who has been active in various joint
Israeli-Palestinian projects in the field over the past 30 years, I am
all for such dialogue, (although I think projects are better) and for
Columbia taking an active role in promoting such dialogue. May I suggest
that Columbia start by inviting the head of the Teheran Iranian Bus
drivers’ Union strike against poor working conditions and giving him an
award for moral courage? According to newspaper reports, Mr
Ahmadinejad’s government dealt with him by cutting off his tongue. I
believe that by sucking up (there is no other term) to vicious thugs
such as Mr Ahmadinejad who cut out the tongues of dissidents or suppress
dissent,* Columbia gives them legitimacy and strengthens their hands
against those whom they oppress, intimidate, torture, mutilate and kill.
If, as Santayana said, tragedy repeated becomes farce, in this case
farce repeated becomes tragedy.
Sincerely
Elihu D Richter MD MPH
Professor Emeritus
BA, Columbia College 1959
*Amehdinejad’s imprisonment of Haleh Esfandiari and others
_https://spme.org/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=7_
(https://spme.org/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=7)
2) Amedinejad’s threats to banish “liberal” academics from Iran’s
universities._https://spme.org/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1099_
(https://spme.org/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1099)
************************
Dear President Bollinger:
A year ago, to the day, we wrote to you to express our astonishment
about the events leading up to the invitation and subsequent
dis-invitation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia’s prestigious World
Leaders Forum. We quote from our letter:
“This morning we were astounded to learn from the Columbia Spectator
that Dean Lisa Anderson of the School of International and Public
Affairs had invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the World Leaders Forum
tomorrow, the Eve of Rosh Hashana, as you noted in your press release.
We gather that you had been equally astounded only hours earlier.
However, surprise does not explain why your statement, quoted in the New
York Sun, indicated that only security concerns and lack of lead time
might prevent him from speaking. As the President of this university and
as a distinguished advocate of academic freedom, you might have been
expected to come up with more principled reasons. “
Your press release,last year, stated; ” I do not believe President
Ahmadinejad’s patently false claims about history, about the undeniable
fact and horror of the Holocaust in the murder of innocent millions, and
his own government’s policies in the world, will be seen as anything but
absurd “.The repeated invitation, this year, demonstrates that Columbia
is in the business of providing a platform for the “most absurd and
repugnant ideas “. Indeed, Columbia appears to be the only academic
institution in this country to interpret its charter to provide a
platform for and- through the invitation in its Word Leaders Forum-
legitimization of a man as absurd and repugnant as Ahmadinejad. The
actions of Columbia’s Administration are in stark contrast to the
universal rejection by all parts of the political spectrum of
Ahmadinejad’s rights to make other public appearances in the city, let
alone to reach out to him as a distinguished speaker.
We conclude this letter by quoting the remainder of our letter to you
from last year. While a year has passed and while this year we are
facing this embarrassment, not on the eve of Rosh Hashanah but on that
of Yom Kippur, our facts stated then, remain as pertinent as they were
then. Unless, of course, one believes Ahmadinejad has redeemed
himself, in the past year, by chairing the Holocaust Denial Conference,
by his more frequent and vociferous threats to wipe Israel off the face
of the planet or his incarceration and brutal treatment of innocent
American academics.
“Ahmadinejad, the head of state of Iran, has declared repeatedly, and as
recently as this week, that another nation, Israel, must be wiped off
the face of the earth. Iran distributes much of the weaponry killing
American soldiers in Iraq; funds and supports Hizbullah, one of the
State Department’s recognized terrorist organizations, in its attacks on
Jews in Argentina and Americans in Lebanon; works to compromise the
sovereignty of Lebanon, and, of course, sponsors any organization that
is prepared to kill Israelis. In your press release, you said:
As the Dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs,
Dean Anderson has the right and responsibility to invite speakers whom
she believes will add to the academic experience of our students….
Freedom to speak, pursue ideas, and even to hear and evaluate viewpoints
totally objectionable to our own is central to America’s greatness. It
is also an essential value of our universities and, indeed, of our civil
society.
Like you, we value academic freedom and freedom of speech, but neither
academic freedom nor the First Amendment requires Columbia University to
give a podium to anyone who wants it, let alone a Hitler wannabe who has
actively suppressed academic freedom in his own country. Ahmadinejad has
proposed purging liberal and secular faculty from all Iranian
universities; some 40 professors at Tehran University were forced to
retire last June. Scholars, students, and journalists in Iran have been
imprisoned for their views. Does Dean Anderson seriously believe that
hearing the views of this Holocaust denier and inciter would “add to the
academic experience of our students”?
Would Columbia, in 1939 or 1940, have extended an invitation to the
Chancellor of Germany? Would it extend one today to the leaders of the
Ku Klux Klan or Osama bin Laden?
Awi Federgruen,
Charles E. Exley Professor of Management,
Graduate School of Business
Judith S. Jacobson, DrPH, MBA
Department of Epidemiology
Mailman School of Public Health
**************
Dear President Bollinger
Ahmadinejad’s pending invitation to speak at Columbia presents a moral
challenge. The organizers have cast this event as an expression of
academic freedom. Indeed, on the surface, why should any views, even
as despicable as Ahmadinejad’s, not be freely aired at Columbia?
Unfortunately, this theory of “academic freedom” is invalid for
Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has been leading a campaign to purge Iranian
universities from “the presence of liberal and secular lecturers” (his
words); a leading Iranian academician has compared the brutality of
these attacks on academia to Hitler’s actions (see attachment below).
Should Columbia redefine “academic freedom” by hosting a leader of its
very destruction?
Nor has Ahmadinejad been shy about his concrete plans for nuclear
genocide to annihilate Israel and his more vague plans for the demise
of western civilization including the US and Europe. Extending an
invitation to him is as morally founded as exploiting Columbia, some
75 years ago, to provide a platform for Hitler’s media event in
presenting “Mein Kampf”. Should Columbia’s prostitute its academic
freedom to serve a media event of a megalomaniac tyrant?
I am thus writing this message to support you in canceling the
invitation. Taking such a moral stand would help circumscribe
“academic freedom” to protect it against abusive exploitations.
I am looking forward to applaud your courage in doing the right thing.
Sincerely
Prof. Yechiam Yemini (YY)
CS Department
=========================================
ATTACHMENT:
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER REGARDING AHMADINEJAD’S INVITATION
What does Ahmadinejad hope to accomplish by speaking at Columbia?
———————————————————————————————
Ahmadinejad certainly lacks no platforms to express his views freely.
Indeed, his views on a wide range of topics–from “purging” Iranian
campuses of secular faculty, to using nuclear weapons to “cleanse” the
Middle East from Israel, to discussing Jewish rituals of baking Matzah
with children’s blood, to denying the Holocaust, to the role of Iran
in leading the demise of western civilization to spread Islam— have
been well documented and are widely available over the Internet (I
will be happy to provide you with specific references for all facts
below). One can hardly explain his seasonal (every Fall) Interest in
Columbia as a platform to air any of these views, normally reserved to
Iranian and Arab media. Fortunately, his interests are not too
difficult to imagine, given his failed attempts to stage a similar
media event at Ground Zero. Columbia would provide an excellent
platform to stage a media event and accord scholarly legitimacy for
his views. This leaves the question:
Should Columbia allow Ahmadinejad to exploit it as a platform for his
media events?
———————————————————————————————————
More importantly,
Should Columbia redefine its “academic freedom” by extending it to a
leader of a massive
————————————————————————————————————-
campaign to brutally eliminate academic freedoms at Iranian universities?
—————————————————————————————-
Ahmadinejad has broadly expressed his views that Iranian universities
should be purged from “the presence of liberal and secular lecturers”.
He followed these by firing hundreds of faculty and then launching
brutal suppression of the ensuing widespread students protests… Prof
Kadivar –a prominent philosophy faculty and a member of Iran’s
Council for Supervision of Universities fired from all his
positions–described this campaign as “…[Some regime members]..who
believe in the use of force, want to behave like Hitler in Nazi
Germany…”.
Worse,
Should Columbia provide a platform for a president calling for a
nuclear genocide and acting
—————————————————————————————————————-
vigorously to implement it?
———————————-
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly described his intention to annihilate
Israel using nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad has not been shy about the
details of his “Final Solution”. Indeed, he has been using the
annihilation of Israel as the very justification of his nuclear plans,
to counter objections by other regime members. Ahmadinejad frames his
genocide plans in terms of “cleansing” the land, much like Hitler,
while already executing such “cleansing” to various ethnic and
religious minorities in Iran. Likewise, he has been intensely engaged
in building the ideological base for his actions, investing efforts in
educating Iranian’s on “Jewish customs” of murdering children to
prepare Matzah bread and in denying the Holocaust. And likewise, his
ambitions do not end with a mere genocide; he has been outspoken about
the role of Iran as a global military power, to lead the demise of
western civilization including the US and Europe.
So perhaps additional questions to consider are
What do the event organizers hope to accomplish?
————————————————————
Are they trying to promote academic freedom, or a free scholarly
exchange? All signs are negative; attendance of the event has been
carefully limited to a preselected audience, in contradiction with the
open invitation to attend; will such selective “academic freedom”
enhance the integrity of of Columbia’s academic freedom, or damage it?
Do the organizers expect Ahmadinejad to freely present his views on
purging of Iranian academia, the Holocaust, his plans to nuke Israel,
of for the demise of Western civilization? Or, is this event intended
to exploit Columbia as a media platform for the kind of soothing lies,
to be recorded by History on the same page as Chamberlain’s “peace in
our time” address on the eve of WW-II?
What, if anything, do the organizers stand to gain?
————————————————————-
It may not be unreasonable to consider whether the current Conflicts
of Interests policy protects Columbia against the potential of
self-dealing scenarios.
