Published - Tuesday, September 25, 2007
"Opinion" in the La Crosse Tribune
Universities should err on side of free speech, inquiry
By Richard Mial | La Crosse Tribune
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Should Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be allowed to speak in the United States? And was Columbia University justified in inviting the Iranian leader to address students while he was here?
I would say yes to both questions. But it’s a tough issue.
Jimmy Gillman, who writes a “Critic at Large” blog on our Web site, argued against it. He cited the Iranian president’s Holocaust denial, threats against Israel and possible provision of Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated explosive devices that are used to kill American soldiers in Iraq.
Most of the seven people who commented agreed with him. One also said, “I think his plane should mysteriously plunge into the ocean when he leaves.”
But what is a university for, if not to offer its students exposure to ideas, and the people who hold those ideas? Ahmadinejad was given a visa for an appearance at the United Nations, and we need to understand the thinking of a chief of state in an important Middle Eastern and Muslim nation.
CBS News broadcast an extensive interview with him Sunday night — and students were given an opportunity to ask him questions during his address to them on Monday morning. I would say that Columbia University officials were doing their job when they invited him to speak.
Before and during the period Ahmadinejad was on campus, there were protesters. They carried pictures and posters, and they handed out leaflets. There was no danger of Ahmadinajad getting a free pass in the war of ideas.
Last week there was another university argument about someone coming to campus. This one was on the West Coast — at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. The issue was the appointment of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located on Stanford’s otherwise liberal campus.
More than 2,000 professors, students, alumni and staff members signed petitions protesting Rumsfeld’s appointment. He will serve as a visiting fellow for one year, and probably visit campus three to five times during that period to advise a task force on ideology and terrorism.
One faculty critic who objected to the Bush administration relaxing standards about torture of detainees, said, “It is unacceptable to have someone who represents the values that Rumsfeld has portrayed, in an academic setting.”
Another faculty member said, “It is extremely important for the Hoover (Institution) to know that their appointments are not in the mainstream of the Stanford community, as well as to send a very clear signal to the country that this is not what Stanford is about.”
Actually, the exchange and questioning of ideas — controversial or otherwise — should precisely be what a university is about. And that’s true whether the speaker is a former U.S. defense secretary or the president of Iran.
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