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
To be honest, with Bernard Kouchner's Cheney-style remarks, I suspect Sarkozy has paved the way for some sort of Israeli lobby to the French foreign policy machine, which I think is unprecedented.
This blog post, that I just found, gives more detail: Bernard Kouchner: Israel Got Lucky
My most recent article for the Guardian is about the effect of U.S. economic sanctions on the Iranian academia and how Haleh Esfandiari's case comes to this picture.
On a sunny day in Washington, DC, my imaginary American scholar, Hannah Esfandiari, was sitting in her Kalorama-located house, opening a letter she had just received from Tehran, Iran.
It was a job offer from a prominent think tank at the heart of the Islamic Republic's policy-making machine. Her main job was going to be establishing contacts with Americans dissidents, scholars and activists and inviting them to Tehran to speak to high-ranking Iranian policy-makers, top officers of the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence ministry.
But she could not take the job offer. Not because she was afraid of being charged with assisting a "state sponsor of terrorism" and perhaps being sent to Guantanamo Bay, but simply because, based on the Iranian Transactions Regulations, it would be illegal for her or any other American to sign any contract with, accept any funds from, or give any service to an Iranian citizen or organisation, wherever in the world. Violating that law could cost her up to 20 years of jail and a $250,000 fine.
Someone please tell me if Robin Wright is a journalist or Haleh Esfandiari's PR manager. How dare she can get away with such blatant lie that "Esfandiari and the [Woodrow Wilson] center have long denied receiving any U.S. funding for the lecture series she runs."
The about page of the Woodrow Wilson Center reads "Approximately one third of the Center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government."
And then, Lee Hamilton writes in his report to the Congress (PDF) that Woodrow Wilson Center continues joint ventures with American and non-American organisations that are "mutually beneficial" and "extends the reach and the effectiveness of the Center’s work."
And guess what joint ventures the Middle East Programme (run by Haleh Esfandiari) continues to work with
Middle East Program conferences with the Hoover Institution on Iran, with USIP for Iraqi women, and with the National Endowment for Democracy on Islamism and democracy in Muslim countries;
Robin Wright deserves to be fired for such obvious false, unfair and partial way of reporting that she consistently showed during Esfandiari's arrest in Iran. How can the Washington Post continue to stand such clear violation of the most basic rules of journalism?
[The Woodrow Wilson Center] is continuing to engage in joint venturing with other institutions around the country and overseas – joint venturing that is mutually beneficial and that extends the reach and the effectiveness of the Center’s work.Examples include:
- numerous Latin American Program conferences co-hosted with a variety of Latin America-based institutions on such topics
as Haiti, Cuba, US-Mexican relations, and peace building in Colombia;- The Kennan Institute working with four major American foundations on a conference in Russia on civil society and its important role;
- Middle East Program conferences with the Hoover Institution on Iran, with USIP for Iraqi women, and with the National Endowment for Democracy on Islamism and democracy in Muslim countries;
- and the convening of a number of university groups, business groups, and nongovernmental organization representatives with government officials from several agencies to assess the balance between access and security and to discuss current visa issues and a myriad of problems getting foreigners into the United States.