Swedish Toast

President of Iran goes to Columbia University. He is accused of all sorts of things, many of which may be true. He is publicly called belittling names by the university president, among others. People picket outside with signs that declare they have no interest in hearing him, no interest in seeing him. Some of the signs depict him with red lines across his face.

It is very despicable of people who claim to value free speech, who claim to value freedom, who claim to value loving their neighbours to suspend their beliefs to consciously hurt someone. That's what the students and faculty (in general) did at Columbia University yesterday. If you don't like him, then deal with it. Rally your government, rally your community, whatever. But let the guy talk without insulting him. Otherwise you are simply using the same strategy you claim you are so disgusted that he is using. If he is an idiot, people will figure it out. It is very totalitarian to tell people not to listen to someone because he is wrong. Let the people decide. Maybe that's what you are afraid of, that you won't even know the difference unless someone tells you first.

And of all places to state that we know absolutely what happened in the past and that the documents speak for themselves, a university should know better. I am not saying it is appropriate or even sane to suggest that the Holocaust did not happen, but the first lesson any student of history learns is that events of the past did not occur in one single specific way. By ordering the past into cause and effect, we place dramatic parameters on something that never exhibited those parameters in the first place. The president of Iran asked some interesting questions, "how do we know what we know, what were the conditions that led to it, who was truly responsible," questions that would appear in any history class, whether it deals with the Holocaust or Queen Victoria's wigs. The president of Columbia argued that we know what we know because the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. I would not pass any history class if I argued that point. History is not about relying on documents; it is erroneous to assert that history is knowable, that chapters have been written and are now closed to all interrogation. Keep it alive, engage with it; this is the only way to get close to what happened.

“When you really think about it,” Mr. Bush said, “he’s the head of a state sponsor of terror, he’s — and yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not sure I’d have offered the same invitation.” Columbia hardly allowed him to express his views without chortling and ridiculing him. And the leader of the US himself stated that he probably would not have extended his country's freedoms to the Iranian leader. I don't even think Bush believes in free speech. Shouldn't the leader of the country represent everything the country believes to be valuable and worth protecting? They certainly expect the Iranian leader to be the representation of everything that Iran is.

Let the guy talk. If you are right in the long run, your compassion and intelligence will shine through.