This was written last night…

I do not post on here often; I am generally just a quiet observer. I am not as politically involved as my brothers who post on here, but when a huge event like the one today happens on my turf, I feel the need to add my perspective.

An overwhelming, chaotic day finally comes to an end at Columbia University in New York City. Since last Thursday there was a lot of hype and controversy over the announcement of Iran’s President, Ahmadinejad, to speak at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum held annually. Each day there were more and more articles flooding the school newspaper. Then, Sunday night the Columbia community received an email about the increase of security on campus, which included needing a Columbia ID to even get on campus. This was becoming the biggest event on campus since I have been here the past three years.

By 8pm last night there were already flyers and posters covering all areas of campus and protestors outside the gates who had been there all day. You can see some of these flyers in the photos I have included. All the ones up last night were against the president coming and included some very dramatic images of people being hanged and tortured. A bit overboard if you ask me. But that little showcase of student speech was nothing compared to what happened today.

As I was on my way to campus with the intention of going to my 1:10pm class (hoping the professor would let us leave and watch the speech from 1:30-2:30pm) I ran into a classmate and decided with all this chaos, we had a pretty good reason to miss class. The gates into campus were PACKED! Protestors outside, spectators just watching, and students pushing to get through to campus. The number of flyers and posters doubled since last night. But it seemed the increase was due to students advocating the right for the Iranian president to speak on campus. There was a huge screen set up in the middle of campus so everyone could watch the speech live.

A couple thousand people watched in silence as the program began with Columbia’s President, Lee Bollinger, making the opening remarks. There were loud cheers at his attacks on the Iranian President, especially in his concluding remarks when he said, “Frankly, and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.” A pretty bold statement. Then President Ahmadinejad opened with some very good remarks about Bollinger not being respectful to his guest and not even allowing him to have the first words, but instead prefacing his speech with his own comments. The audience erupted in applause at these comments as well.

The Iranian President’s speech in itself was nothing too exciting, but there was a Q & A session that followed. Some tough questions were asked, and as all politicians, he bounced around the answers. Except for one question. He was asked about the hangings of homosexuals in his country. His response “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.” That was his most direct response to any question and it received the loudest response from the audience, both laughs and then boos. His speech and the questions touched on topics of the Holocaust, Israel, Uranium developments, terrorism, women’s freedom, and the Iraq war.

At the conclusion of the program, students dispersed, another protest took place, and within an hour after the event security had already loosened up a lot. I had classes to attend so I left the scene for the rest of the day. I walked home from my last class at 7:30pm and campus looked as if nothing had happened today. Posters were no longer up, the TV screen was down, and people were getting on with their normal lives. The chaos of the event in the preceding days and hours seemed to greatly outweigh the actual event, in my opinion. It just seemed like so much controversy over a one hour period of a foreign president speaking about political issues.