Ahmadineblog

Despite the Secret Service’s many and well-heeded warnings to attendees at yesterday’s speech to stay seated, the Islamic Republic News Agency <a href=“http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-24/0709252616013529.htm”>claims</a> that Ahmadinejad received a “standing ovation of the audience.” What of President Bollinger’s scathing introduction of the Iranian president? The press agency writes that, “Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.”

CTV has forwarded a new link to their video. And after rewatching the speech, it becomes quite apparent that Bollinger never did shake Ahmadinejad’s hand.

For those of you who missed yesterday’s speech by Ahmadinejad or just want to relive its high points, a full transcript is available here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/24/AR2007092401042.html.

(You may need to register in order to view it)

UPDATE: Via poster Susan M, a full transcript of Ahmadinejad’s speech. (Thanks, Susan.)

We’ve been getting a lot of requests today for a full transcript of the event. Unfortunately, we do not have one. For those looking for a full transcript of Bollinger’s speech, you can find it on Columbia’s Web site. Columbia Television has said that they are posting a <a href=”http://www.ctvnewsonline.com/archive/2007/9/24/full_speech_mahmoud_ahmadinej”> full video of the speech, </a> but we haven’t seen it work, yet. Additionally, the University at one point said that they would provide video of the event, but that doesn’t appear to be up, yet, either.

For the moment, here are some of the main representative quotes from President Ahmadinejad over the course of the event. If anybody knows of a transcript that we don’t, please tell us and we’ll happily link to it.

“It was my decision to speak with you of the importance of knowledge,
information, education.”

On Bollinger’s introduction:
“In Iran, … we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given, to come in with a series of claims.”
“He certainly took more than the allocated time to speak, and that’s fine with me.”
“In many parts of the speech, there were many insults, and claims that were incorrect, regretfully.”

On science:
“Making weapons of mass destruction is yet another misuse of science. Without the cooperation of certain scientists, we would not have witnessed the production of chemical and biological weapons…If nuclear war wages, what human catastrophe will take place?”
“These catastrophes take place only when scholars and scientists are misused.”

On supporting terrorism:
“We don’t need to resort to terrorism, we are victims of terrorism.”

On the rights of women:
“Our nation has the highest level of participation in elections. 80-90% turn out for elections, over half of whom are women. So how can you say that they are not free?”
“In Iran, every family that is given a girl is ten times happier than having a son.”

On the monopoly of Western mega-powers:
“Two or three selfish powers want to deny the Iranian people their right.”
“They are exempt from the legal responsibility of men.”

On Palestine:
“Is the Palestinian issue not an issue of international concern? Please tell me, yes or no?”
“For sixty years, these [Palestinians] people are being moved, for sixty years, these people are being killed, … for sixty years children in kindergarten are being tortured in prison.”
“You know quite well that Palestine is an old wound. For 60 years, these people are displaced.”
“Given this historical event [the Holocaust] is a reality…why is it that the Palestinian people are praying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?”

On Western views of the Iranian nuclear program:
“I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs are politically backward, retarded.”

On Bollinger’s request to come to Iran with a number of students and scholars to speak at Iranian universities and free speech issues.
“Come and speak with our university students. You are officially invited.”

by Anastasia Gornick, Jacob Schneider, and Laura Schreiber

Columbia Daily Spectator
As a war of words carried on in Roone Arledge Auditorium on Monday, factions of pro-Israel and anti-war activists shouted across barricades on a block-long stretch of Broadway.
On campus, the mood was more reflective, with student groups taking turns presenting their takes on Columbia’s controversial invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a speak-out organized by the ad hoc Columbia Coalition. During the speech, the crowd on the South Lawn far outnumbered that on the streets, as thousands of students crowded around a giant-screen video truck to watch Ahmadinejad’s speech.
While the Columbia Coalition was nominally apolitical, demonstrators appeared to be mostly divided into two camps. There was a pervading pro-Israel sentiment as members of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel sang and danced on Low Plaza, clad in specially-ordered black T-shirts. The other major presence was a large contingent of anti-war protesters.
The off-campus protest was much smaller than the 10,000 people predicted by administrators, but the protesters compensated for it by being loud and boisterous. Several dozen New York Police Department officers stood guard around a barricaded crowd concentrated at the intersection of Broadway and 116th Street. NYPD estimates of the actual crowd came in at under 1,000. The police did not close Broadway, as had been expected, but corralled the crowd behind metal barricades on Broadway’s outermost lanes and closed off sidewalks for a block in each direction from Lerner Hall.
Students across campus skipped classes or made time between them to watch speakers from campus groups comment on President Ahmadinejad’s presence on campus and the policies of the Iranian government. A hush fell when the big screen came to life, beaming the speeches in Roone Arledge to students on the South Lawn. According to Rosemary Keane, assistant vice president for Student and Administrative Services, between two and three thousand students and faculty assembled to watch.
Viewers cheered the image of John Coatsworth, acting dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, and one spectator on the lawn raised an Iranian flag. When University President Lee Bollinger appeared, the crowd hollered its support, and his comments addressing free speech drew warm cheers.
Earlier in the day, Iranian flags dominated the small knot of protesters outside the Broadway gates. Numbers and tempers swelled with busloads of pro-Israel demonstrators who arrived later in the afternoon.
In halting English, Iranian immigrant Jamshid Sayas said he did not oppose the University’s asking Ahmadinejad to speak but wanted it to be clear that the president did not speak for all Iranians. “Politics should be separate from religion,” he said. “We don’t need a Muslim fanatic for Iran.”
Pro-Israel protesters screamed at Holocaust deniers, and a small crowd gathered around a woman holding a sign supporting Bollinger’s decision to host the Iranian president, jabbing their fingers at her while shouting “Nazi” and “Shame.” Discussion deteriorated, and screamed arguments broke out on corners up and down the barricaded blocks of Broadway.
Pro-Israel supporters also vented their anger at an Iranian-American City College student holding a sign reading “American-Iranian Friendship Committee.”
“Where’s your burka?,” a woman screamed over and over again.
“I think you’re showing a little too much skin,” another man yelled. “If you were dressed like that in Iran, you would be raped.”
CUNY architecture student Mahdi Hosseinzadeh held photographs of his imprisoned friends and said that he had taken a class taught by Ahmadinejad while a student at Iran University of Science and Technology. Although he described the president as a “good teacher,” he said that he objected to his policy of imprisoning political dissidents.
“My friends are in President Ahmadinejad’s prison,” he said. “They are imprisoned for being part of an Iranian student movement. When Ahmadinejad took them first, they put them in jail for no reason—then they come up with political reasons.”
The largest group of off-campus demonstrators came to protest Ahmadinejad’s past threats against Israel, including a large group from the Zionist Organization of America. Many said that by giving Ahmadinejad a platform, Columbia was giving credibility to hate speech.
“Free speech does not include hate,” Yeshiva University student Eric Israeli said. “For a university that claims it’s neutral—that it doesn’t follow one political party or one theology—it’s completely off the mark” to host Ahmadinejad.
Holocaust survivor Lyubov Bistreff, 77, said she came to protest against Ahmadinejad’s revision of history. “He cannot deny it [the Holocaust] because I am a witness … I remember everything. Why does he deny this? This is history, this is history.”
Maria Insalaco, Joy Resmovits, Ivette Sanchez, and Lydia Wileder contributed to this article.

The authors of this article can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.

By Tom Faure and Melissa Repko
Columbia Daily Spectator

University President Lee Bollinger blasted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the Iranian president’s speech yesterday, during which he in turn attacked Western interference with his nation’s policies.
During his remarks, Ahmadinejad clarified and defended his views on the Holocaust, declared that there was no homosexuality in Iran, and denied that his country had ambitions of a nuclear weapons program.
But Bollinger set the tone for the event with his opening remarks, when he drew cheers from the crowd with his statement, “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”
Through a translator, Ahmadinejad rebuked Bollinger for his comments, calling them insulting and saying that guest speeches in his nation follow a certain decorum. “In Iran,” he said, “we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given, to come in with a series of claims.”
After a rambling half-hour speech on the power of science and knowledge—and how it can be misused—Ahmadinejad fielded question from students as delivered by John Coatsworth, interim dean of the School of International and Public Affairs.
Ahmadinejad spoke out against what he sees as 60 years of injustice for and victimization of the Palestinian people, calling for a free referendum. “We must allow Jewish Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians, to choose their future for themselves,” he said.
During the speech, Ahmadinejad deviated from the usual news reports of his views on the Holocaust and Israel. Responding to a question, he said, “We love all nations. We are friends with Jewish people.” When pressed by Coatsworth, he then refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer on whether he wanted to “wipe Israel off the map,” but brought both topics back to the Palestinian issue.
“I am not saying that it [the Holocaust] did not happen at all. I am saying that—granted this happened—what does this have to do with the Palestinian people?” he asked, saying that Palestinians were displaced to make way for a Jewish state of Israel. He said that just as more research leads to changing perspectives in science, it is also valuable to continue reevaluating and studying historical events, including the Holocaust, saying, “There’s nothing known as absolute.”
Touching on modern international relations, Ahmadinejad condemned what he called the “monopoly of big powers.” He implied that foreign governments spread lies about Iran and denied that the nation suppresses women’s rights. He defended Iran’s laws and its use of execution, saying they are in the people’s best interest, adding, “Don’t you have capital punishment in the United States? You do, too.”
Responding to a question about homosexuality in Iran, Ahmanidejad said, In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” a statement which drew laughter followed by boos.
Aries Dela Cruz, GS ’08 and communications chair of the Columbia Queer Alliance, said after the speech that the question to Ahmadinejad had been poorly phrased.
“The Western category of gay or lesbian doesn’t translate well into Farsi,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that Ahmadinejad didn’t understand the question.”
Regarding his failed attempt to visit Ground Zero, Ahmadinejad said he merely intended to pay respects and wrote off criticism of this wish as a pessimistic, paranoid American mentality.
At several points, Ahmadinejad drew significant applause—much of it coming from seating reserved for his guests—as well as some boos, and a few incredulous laughs. In an interview after the event, Coatsworth expressed his pride in students. “It’s easy to believe in free speech if everybody agrees with you,” he said. “Free speech is meaningless if you don’t hear views that are quite different and even outrageous,” he added.
Hanging over the speech, though, was Bollinger’s incisive introduction where he laid out questions for Ahmadinejad to address.
Addressing Ahmadinejad’s purported denial of the Holocaust, which Bollinger called “the most documented event in human history,” he admonished Ahmadinejad, saying, “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” Later, in citing Ahmadinejad’s previous statement that Israel should “be wiped off the map,” Bollinger noted the University’s deep ties to the country, and asked, “Do you plan on wiping us off the map too?” He also rattled off questions about a proxy war in Iraq, human rights abuses, and the creation of nuclear weapons program in Iran.
“I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions,” Bollinger said near the end of his remarks, which he closed by saying, “I am only a professor who is also a University president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”
Many said they found the comments polarizing and that they lent sympathy to Ahmadinejad.
One SIPA student who would not give her name said Bollinger lacked professionalism, “especially given the fact that he [Ahmadinejad] hadn’t even been given the chance to speak.”
“It made the audience predisposed to sort of sympathize with Ahmadinejad,” she said. “He was actually liked by the audience without uttering a word, and I think that’s where Bollinger lost his ground.”
Some also expressed their disappointment that Bollinger engaged in what they felt were personally attacked Ahmadinejad. Others doubted if the event clearly upheld free speech—the very justification for the event—especially since students could not address Ahmadinejad by themselves.
Bollinger later defended his introduction. “I did not want to risk blandness, which would have given the wrong message about how dialogue should work,” he said in an interview.
Coatsworth said he was ambivalent about the tone Bollinger’s introduction lent to the speech. “I think that it was President Bollinger’s purpose to distinguish between inviting someone to speak and endorsing what the speaker says,” Coatsworth said in an interview following the event. “On the other hand he didn’t respond to most of President Bollinger’s criticisms.”
Those in attendance reacted strongly to the event.
“It’s a question-and-answer session between the guy who would have invited Hitler and Hitler himself,” Jordan Hirsch, CC ’10 and a member of LionPAC, said, expressing anger that there was not an open microphone at the event.
Others said that no comments could change such an obstinate leader’s beliefs.
“It was a huge waste of time, and I think it was a huge mistake that they invited him,” William Nosal, CC ’08 and the treasurer of the College Republicans, said, calling Ahmadinejad’s message propagandistic.
Many charged that Ahmadinejad failed to directly answer questions. While moderating the event, Coatsworth worked to follow up on questions he felt the Iranian president had dodged. “There’s no way to change that genetic code of a politician. My job is to try to come up with questions that will sharpen the point,” Coatsworth said before the speech.
While the campus still buzzes in the aftermath of Ahmandinejad’s appearance, Columbia is left with an informal invitation to Iran. Bollinger also gave an invitation of his own, extending a visiting faculty position to Kian Tajbakhsh, the recently-released Columbia Ph.D. and scholar.

Joshua Chambers, Anastasia Gornick, and Joy Resmovits contributed to this article.
The authors of this story can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.

According to Rosemary Keane, Vice president of Student Services, around 2,000-3,000 people showed up for the on-campus video feed and protest. This number pales in comparison to original NYPD estimate of 10,000 protesters, the actual officers on the scene reported an additional 500-600 protesters showed up outside the campus walls.

Comment about your own estimates below.

You could be excused if you were unaware that Ahmadinejad wasn’t the only foreign leader speaking on campus today. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was also speaking in the Italian Academy today.

According to University phone operator Lareine White, the University is now being flooded with calls to congratulate Columbia on the Ahmadinejad invitation.

Talk about a change of heart.

“I’m sorry that the President’s limited time here prevents him from answering all the qustions you had for him or even some of the final ones we posed to him.”

With some muted applause and only a handful of boos. The event is over.

On the invitation: we’ll give you a platform and respect you 100 percent. Our students will speak and sit with you.

Finally, he thanks Columbia University: “I hear many politicians in the United States are trained at Columbia University” gets a laugh.

With one final prayer and a best of luck, the speech is over.

Ahmadinejad thanks the audience:

From this platform i invite Columbia students and faculty to speak to our University students. You’re officially invited.

This is about the United States and Iranian relations. The question is whether Iran will negotiate with the United States.

Ahmadinejad said:  sure. They won’t negoatiate with Apartheid South Africa or the Zionist nation, but is totally up to speaking with anyone else. “We don’t need threats. We don’t need to point bombs,” he said.

He said he questions “the way the world is being run today.” But he is willing to negotiate with mutual respect.  “We want to talk,” he said.

The US government is facing vitriol now for preventing Iran from developing.

This one is on the nuclear program. Ahmadinejad said the program operates under the rule of law and is for peace only. Iran’s issue, he said, is political, not legal.

“There are two or three powers who think they have the right to occupy all knowledge,” he said.

What did you hope to accomplish by visiting Columbia today an what would you have said if I visited the site of September 11?

Ahmadinejad said he wanted to show sympathy to the victims. “This is my way of showing my respect ..thinking like this how do you expect to manage the world and world affairs?” He wants to show respect for everyone and allow all nations to grow in piece. “In Iran, when you invite a guest, you respect him.”

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you have in your country … I don’t know who’s told you we have it.”

The audience is responding with boos and laughs.

Why do you deny rights to women and gays?

Ahmadinejad said women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom, which generated an audible scoff from the audience, citing the female cabinet members. He then moves on to explaining his policy on executions. “Don’t you have capital punishment in the United States? You do too,” he said, which garnered limited applause.

“For many, a challenge of the facts represents a denial of the facts themselves,” Coatsworth said. Before asking the President again to explain his thoughts on the denial of the Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad responds: “There’s been more research on physcis then there’s been on the Holocaust but yet we keep researching physics.”

Since the facts about the Holocaust are well-documented, why do you believe more research is needed? Is this just a way to prove the Holocaust didn’t happen?

Ahmadinejad sites his work as an academic, and said that we must allow researchers to investigate everything.  “I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all,” he said. Before calling for more research.

“You shouldn’t ask me why I’m asking questions, you should ask yourselves why you think it’s questionable that I want to do so.”

“Why is your government providing aid to terrorists?”

Ahmadinejad responds with a question of his own, asking how we would respond if someone blew up the White House. He goes on to say the Iranian nation is a victim of terrorism itself. He sites terrorist actions in Iran and then says the United States government is funding terrorism in Iran.

” We were the first nation to speak out against terrorism … we need to address the root causes of terrorism. We live in the Middle East. It’s clear to use which nations … support terrorism.”

Iran, he said “is a cultured nation. We don’t need to resort to terrorism.”

Coatsworth tells Ahmadinejad he didn’t really answer the question and tells him he needs a one word answer to the question “do you seek the destruction of Israel” Ahmadinejad refuses to give an answer, instead going back to the argument that we need an international solution to Palestine.

First question is about Israel, and whether Ahmadinejad seeks to destroy it. Ahmadinejad said Israel has the right to self-determination.

While a swarm of protestors of all stripes has descended onto the corner of 116th and Broadway, the crowd is nothing like the 10,000 that one organizing group predicted. It appears that at least for the time being, the NYPD will not be blocking off Broadway but rather has corralled protestors onto sidewalks and adjacent side streets. The cops have also created a one block buffer around Lerner Hall, keeping the sidewalks along Broadway free of pedestrians from 115th St. to 113th and 114th St. is off limits from Amsterdam to Riverside.

But the protestors haven’t let the barricades dampen their spirits. A large contingent condemning Columbia for inviting Ahmedinejad is using its pulpit at 115th and Broadway to solicit honks from passing cars. One block up, a group of Catholics from Pennsylvania is playing bagpipes to draw attention to their cause, Christian values. Loud arguments abound between anti-war activists, Holocaust deniers, Orthodox Jews, and just about every other contigent you can imagine.

The big winners at today’s protest? Ivy League Stationers, where employees at the Broadway store say that they can’t keep poster board in stock today.

And Ahmadinejad is cut off. But Coatsworth gives him an extra minute, a decision that is greated by applause.

Ahmadinejad argues that he should have the chance to ask these questions about the Holocaust without being attacked. “Why should an academic face insults,” he asked. “Is this what you call freedom?”