Now may Columbia stand/honor'd throughout the land/our Alma Mater grand

[snuggly_llama]

Now and for ay!

O Columbia, Alma Mater, I wasn't sure what to say when you announced that you were inviting the President of Iran to come speak on Campus. I mean, this guy's government puts grandmas in jail, among other odious pasttimes. And worse...he smirksHowever, in true Columbia style, the protestors showed up en masse, providing a valuable

Comments

[snuggly_llama]

I agree that the invitation baffled me. However, then I took into account Bollinger's academic porfolio as a scholar of Constitutional law and free speech. There was only a page in my textbook devoted to this, and I haven't read his book, but from what I can tell Bollinger believes in the "peck of dirt" theory of free speech:
Free speech is necessary to the well-being a free-society, but it isn't always nice. Free speech, by its nature, will also include unpleasant speech (and nonspeech) that will roil peoples' emotions and induce them into modes of expressing their displeasure (rioting, murder, barfights, etc). Under the "peck of dirt" theory, exposing people to unpleasant speech and nonspeech (wearing swastika armbands, etc) will tick them off, but in the long run will inure them, and instead of physcially acting on their emotions with violence, will instead respond with more speech (the antidote to speech you disagree with is always more speech.) That way people will be able to air their diverse (and sometimes extremist and noxious viewpoints), and society will not continually be rent apart by violence. (As I understand the theory). This was even true during the Columbia student protest against the Minutemen last year (a political/ideological group that believes in cracking down on illegal immigrants), which turned into a debacle when some crazed protestors rushed the stage where a Minutemen representative was speaking. It wasn't so terrible that the students staged a counter protest to the Minutemen speech, it was that they suppressed the speech of their adversary by forcing him from the stage.
Back to Ahmedinajad: As far as a lesson to Columbia students (even as an administrator, Bollinger is first and foremost a professor), I think it turned out to be a pretty good one in the context of education about free speech. Don't like that CU invited Ahmedinejad? More speech! (Stage a demonstration, make a sign, don't kill anyone). Ahmedinejad wants a forum to provide his viewpoint? Bollinger gave him more speech but giving his unapologetic introduction. Granted, "free speech" as we understand it doesn't really exist in Iran and the forum possibly violated the sacred ancient mediterrean concept of the guest-host relationship. But I can only understand the invitation in the first place by looking at the context of Bollinger's Con Law scholarship. Other than that, maybe he just wanted the publicity?