Ahmadinejad stirs controversy at Columbia University

Amid waves of disgust and international complaint, Columbia University of New York City was host yesterday to an event unprecedented in this country. For weeks the entire nation wanted an answer to one question: Why has Columbia University invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus? Against mounting pressure from the New York City Council, Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby confirmed that the speech would continue as scheduled. In a separate speech, President Bollinger confirmed the event, further saying that Columbia U. is “a major forum for robust debate,” and that Ahmadinejad would answer questions posed by university faculty and students.

The Iranian president further outraged New York citizens when he requested a visit to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks. The request was denied by the NYPD for security reasons, but was enough to further fuel the heat that culminated in lashing attacks by protesters last night before Ahmadinejad spoke.

“…today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world, yearning to express their revolution at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better,” were the words Columbia’s President Bollinger used to welcome the Iranian president to the stage. Through the next 40 minutes, the dignitary, cheered and jeered by the audience, spoke most notably on Israel, the War on Terror and his country’s own funding of terror engines throughout the world.

He made bold claims, at one point during the succeeding question and answer portion, that U.S. government had committed terrorist acts against Iran in the '80s and that the funding of the Israeli government was an act against the “Palestinian Jews, Palestinian Muslims and even the Palestinian Christians.” Ahmadinejad went so far as to equate research of the Holocaust to physics. “Do you ever take what’s absolute that’s known in Physics? … There’s been more research on Physics than on the Holocaust, yet we still continue to do research on Physics,” was his answer when asked why he challenges established history regarding the existence and impact of the Holocaust.

While national coverage of the speech was broken for some regions, most national channels were able to broadcast the Q&A section following the president’s speech. Excerpts of the Q&A and the speech can be found through a simple search on YouTube.