The Arrogance
of Columbia’s President
By Javed Ellahie
San Jose, California
I can understand the pressure that Columbia was
under when it invited Iranian President, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, as a guest to speak before its student
body in New York.
Perhaps it was this pressure that required Columbia's
President, Lee Bollinger, to launch a tirade against
the invited guest and find that he exhibited “all
the signs of a petty and cruel dictator”
and that he was “brazenly provocative or
astonishingly uneducated.”
If these comments were made under pressure that
that doesn't say much for the independence of
our academic institutions, on the other hand if
they were made to cause resentment in Iran for
the arrogant treatment of its invited President,
then they appear to have wildly succeeded.
I am curious as to whether there is any precedence
for this at Columbia or any other university in
the world where an invited speaker is subjected
to taunt and ridicule as part of their Introduction.
Introductions, after all, are supposed to be flattering
and intended to highlight the achievements of
the speaker/guest. The only exception is when
the event is a "Roasting". Did someone
forget to tell the Iranian President that he had
been invited to a Roast?
Usually a speaker is invited so that the audience
can find out what he stands for. I am sure Columbia
students, New Yorkers, especially the loud vocal
New Yorkers know what Columbia's President stands
for, and certainly AIPAC appreciated the brilliancy
of those comments, but such self-righteous comments
uttered from the pulpit of Columbia by the High
Priest of Columbia had no place in an Introduction.
We seem to have become so proud of our "freedom
of speech", that we have forgotten that we
as Americans do not have all the right answers,
(and in some cases we don't even have the wrong
answers - in other words we are totally clueless).
We are, after all the 800-pound Gorilla that pulverizes
whatever it steps on. How can we totally neglect
the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by
our invasion of Iraq, the killing, jailing, maiming
of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction
of our own civil rights, the neglect shown to
Katrina victims, the waste of billions of dollars
in arms when hundreds (if not thousands) in the
US sleep on the streets or in parks and go without
insurance.
We sit here in our isolated halls of freedom and
chastise individuals and countries that we have
never visited and to which the only access we
have is through the myopic, cynical view presented
by the US media. Our people sit in an ignorance
well being spoon-fed miss-information and one-liners
from the media and our politicians lead us guided
by night goggles worn (during the day time) by
our intelligence agencies. Is it a surprise then
that we know so little about what is happening
in the world?
How can the President of Columbia University neglect
the sad state of education that exists, not just
in the quality of education, at the primary and
high school levels, but also the exorbitant cost
required to attend college and instead taunt the
Iranian President on his educational deficiencies?
We have become an arrogant nation that believes
that what it does is right, that those who disagree
with us are terrorists, and that those who seek
to protect their independence are a threat to
us. Our strength and our power have indeed gone
to our heads as we hippopotamus like wreck wherever
we set foot.
We are good at manufacturing reasons to create
enemies; it may be more helpful to use our tremendous
resources to make friends and to understand where
the world is headed. Indeed our economic survival
may depend on this as the rest of the world races
ahead in educating its people and in developing
their economy.
How much time do we have before China comes calling
to collect its trillion dollar debt, before Japan
comes calling and before all the Indian software
engineers and entrepreneurs have departed back
to India taking with them their education, their
experience and the wealth that they created? Perhaps
the sages who live in New York can answer the
question but given the track record displayed
so far, rather than finding a solution these sages
will find another country to blow up. After all
even after Iran has been destroyed, there are
other countries already on the hit list and we
haven’t even scratched the surface.
May I humbly suggest that the next time Columbia
invites someone to speak, do let him or her know
they will be roasted.
