24 September 2007
The dean of the Law School at New York’s Columbia University, David Schizer, has criticized a decision by the university to invite Iran’s hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus. Ahmadinejad, in New York this week for the opening of the UN General Assembly, has accepted an invitation from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs to speak on Monday. Schizer said in a statement: "Although we believe in free and open debate at Columbia and should never suppress points of view, we are also committed to academic standards... A high-quality academic discussion depends on intellectual honesty but, unfortunately, Mr. Ahmadinejad has proven himself, time and again, to be uninterested in whether his words are true."
Schizer described the Iranian leader as a "reprehensible and dangerous figure who presides over a repressive regime, is responsible for the death of American soldiers, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the destruction of Israel." Still, Schizer added, "I recognize that others within our community take a different view in good faith, and that they have the right to extend invitations that I personally would not extend."
Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, had defended the invitation on the grounds of free speech and academic freedom. Bollinger pledged that during his introduction of Ahamdinejad he would issue "a series of sharp challenges" on several issues, including "the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust, his public call for the destruction of the State of Israel; his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops; Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction; his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh."
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