I have to say Columbia University President Lee Bollinger ripped Ahmadinejad a new one today, when he visited the school. I was impressed and a little saddened. Bollinger brought up human rights violations and nuclear ambitions right up front. Even called him “fanatical” and “uneducated”. The talk he did with the Press Club before was also combative, but he blew off all criticism there as coming from uneducated Americans who don’t know and understand Iran.
Ahmadinejad was insulted and rightly so. It was an unprofessional thing to do, blindsiding/disrespecting someone you invited to speak at your school is rude. He spoke at length about God and related almost everything to religion.
I will say he did a good job of pointing out hypocrisies in our views of Iran, when we have and do many of the same terrible things here in America. The audience laughed at the stated notion that Iran doesn’t have homosexuals, like in America and treats women with respect. I guess when rape is the norm, there may be fewer homosexuals? I should probably think about that more.
A gal I work with is Iranian and goes to the Iran often. She calls the regime “crazy” and I have to wonder, if the regime is truly run by the “Supreme Leader” (not Ahmadinejad), then what’s his deal? Is he really so far out of touch that he doesn’t see the brutal truth about what’s going on inside the Iranian borders?
It is bizarre to me that they deny everything, say one thing and actually do another, all the time and their people don’t fight the regime about it. In the US is it really much better though?
The whole event should be up on their web site later; http://www.columbia.edu/
Unrelated, those wacky Swiss…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7010000/newsid_7010800?redirect=7010874.stm&news=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&asb=1
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