Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:
I would like to share a few thoughts about today's appearance ofPresident Ahmadinejad at our World Leaders Forum. I know this is amatter of deep concern for many in our University community andbeyond. I want to say first and foremost how proud I am ofColumbia, especially our students, as we discuss, debate and planfor this highly visible event.
I ask that each of us make special efforts to respect the differentviews people have about the event and to recognize the differentways it affects members of our community. For many reasons, thiswill demand the best of each of us to live up to the best ofColumbia's traditions.
For the School of International and Public Affairs, which developedthe idea for this forum as the commencement to a year-longexamination of 30 years of the Islamic Republic in Iran, this is animportant educational experience for training future leaders toconfront the world as it is -- a world that includes far too manybrutal, anti-democratic and repressive regimes. For the rest of us,this occasion is not only about the speaker but quite centrallyabout us -- about who we are as a nation and what universities canbe in our society.
I would like just to repeat what I have said earlier: It is vitallyimportant for a university to protect the right of our schools, ourdeans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes.Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact withbeliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and evenodious.
But it should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas wedeplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or theweakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté aboutthe very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a criticalpremise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorablewhen 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, isconsistent with the values of academic freedom we share at thecenter of university life. I fully support, indeed I celebrate, theright to peacefully demonstrate and engage in a dialogue about thisevent and this speaker, as I understand a wide coalition of ourstudent groups are planning for today.
That such a forum and suchpublic criticism of President Ahmadinejad's statements and policiescould not safely take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. The kind of freedom thatwill be on display at Columbia has always been and remains todayour nation's most potent weapon against repressive regimeseverywhere in the world. This is the power and example of Americaat its best.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger
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