Gary Sick: Ahmadinejad emerged unscathed.

Here is Gary Sick's take on Ahmadinejad's Columbia performance and its surrounding events:

Ahmadinejad gave mostly his usual exposition. He did make several points that have been made before but are always ignored or lost in the noise: (1) The way Israel is to be "wiped off the map" is by a referendum in Palestine, not a nuclear holocaust; and (2) Iran is not interested in, and is not producing, nuclear weapons.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger opened the proceedings with a bill of particulars about Iran that had its own small errors of fact but, more important, was pitched in a deliberately insulting tone, descending almost to the level of schoolyard taunts. (I hope students did not take away the lesson that this is how international politics should be conducted.) The dias was draped in black crepe, almost like a funeral, with no school emblems or names.

Ahmadinejad scored a few points. He maintained his composure. When asked what he hoped to accomplish by a visit to Columbia, he replied "I was invited here." In response to Bollinger's challenge to let a Columbia delegation visit Iran, he replied that they would be welcome, that they could visit any of Iran's more than 400 universities, that they could say whatever they liked, and "We will even be polite" to them.

He also persisted in all of his most egregious comments. Just as science never declares any subject finally closed, he intoned, so the Holocaust should remain a topic of research, i.e. Holocaust denial is legitimate. To this he added the amazing news that there are no homosexuals in Iran, which brought snorts of derision from the otherwise polite audience. In my experience, Ahmadinejad always plows ahead on the utterly mistaken notion that his audience can be persuaded by even his wildest flights of fancy. It says something about the private universe that he inhabits.

The biggest applause was for Bollinger's remarks, which were clearly aimed more at his NY audience than at Ahmadinejad. But Ahmadinejad got a pretty good round of applause as he finished up with a call for Palestinian self-determination.

In the short term, I suspect that Bollinger will have disarmed some of the virulent criticism of Columbia from the right (though I will wait and see -- they are not easily put off). Ahmadinejad, in turn, will probably improve his Third World credentials as someone who is not afraid to venture into the Lion's den (literally, since Columbia teams are the Lions and there is even a terrific statue of a lion on campus) and emerged largely unscathed.

To me, the most interesting factoid was that the CU student body fought desperately to get admitted into the auditorium (the largest on campus and totally packed), suggesting that they were at least interested in the novelty of the event -- but perhaps even the substance. Demonstrations started early in the day and were still going strong by the time I came home in the late afternoon. From my casual observation, demonstrations were primarily expressing opposition to Ahmadinejad and his visit to the campus, followed by expressions of opposition to war with Iran. There were also a few pro-Iran demonstrations.

Although I was not involved in setting up this particular event, I absolutely supported the idea and I have not changed my mind. There were a lot of different signals emanating from this event, and there was a lot of substance and symbol for students (and faculty too) to chew on. I'm not sure that free speech was the winner, but even the questions about free speech were more complicated and worthy of serious thought than one might have expected from this kind of encounter.

I'm sure that there are intense discussions underway in every campus hangout tonight, and Columbia students will not be the worse for having chewed over the larger issues that were raised here -- intentionally or inadvertently.

Source: Gulf 2000 forum