A Profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is currently serving as the sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The highest directly elected official in the country, he is an outspoken critic of the George W. Bush Administration.

Ahmadinejad supports Iran’s nuclear program in spite of the United Nation’s Security Council demanding him to end it. He lost popularity in some places abroad when he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and described the Holocaust as a “myth.” In Ahmadinejad’s Iran, being gay is a capital offense, women are legally stoned to death for being raped, and democratic activists are flogged in public squares.

Last year, Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak on campus, but the invitation was later rescinded after logistical and security questions could not be satifactorily answered.

Quotations from President Bollinger at a meeting with student representatives yesterday:

“Some people accused me and others as having used the timing problem and the … academic context problem as subterfuges for not wanting him to come because of his views and I said that was not correct,”

“The idea [of the World Leaders Forum] is bringing people of power, influence, people who are important in the world—for good or bad—and to make sure that students especially have the opportunity to hear them and interact with them and its’ my belief that we can do for you is through this exposure to help you interact with people of significant power in the world just seeing someone, just listening to someone, hearing the passions, hearing the answers, and wataching and observing them is a significant educational lesson and you, being at Columbia in New York City, especially at the time around the United Nations General Assembly meeting, have the opportunity to see a stream of visitors through that seems almost impossible for any other university to match”

“a year ago I wasn't prepared to stand up and say I strongly disagreed with Jim Gilchrist and the Minutemen and here I am [inaudible] I really want to stand up and say what I think of the views of Ahmadinejad. What's the principle on which I'm making that decision? The principle is that I have to be very careful as president of the university in saying what I think about speakers, and especially speakers that students bring, because when I say things it can have a chilling effect on what students do on the campus, and whatever my views about Jim Gilchrist or whatever my views about [inaudible] these are speakers brought in by student groups and I feel that it's important to respect that process and not speak out denouncing speakers because I'm worried that it would have an inhibiting effect on this very robust debate that we will have on campus where different student groups can bring in different speakers. So I'm very very selective in doing that, and in this case with the president of Iran and...what it means to the institution to have this person here I think it's very important for me to say this. I don't think anybody will be chilled as a result of my saying this. So that's the distinction.

When it comes to speakers on campus invited by students, I will defend a strong principle of openness I mean, virtually any speaker a school invites to come and speak for academic purposes because the school wants to hear and engage with that person, … because I think that we a campus where we are incredibly open to confronting ideas, even very very bad ideas. I recognize that just to have someone come and speak may help that speaker or those ideas. … I think it would be naïve to say there’s never any potential benefite, but I think it’s so far outweighed by the importance of confronting ideas and not shielding ourselves from the world as it is—that that is the value that we have pitched our lives on.

Bollinger began the event by recalling last year’s invitation and why this was “Some people accused me and others as having used the timing problem and the … academic context problem as subterfuges for not wanting him to come because of his views and I said that was not correct,” Bollinger said in recalling last year, when then-dean of SIPA Lisa Anderson asked Bollinger for University support of the event two days before Ahmadinejad was expected to come.