On Sept. 24, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University. This event was controversial even before Ahmadinejad took the podium, and left us with several questions following his speech.

Journalists, academics and politicians debated whether Ahmadinejad received fair treatment, whether it was right to deny him access to Ground Zero and whether he should have even spoken at Columbia in the first place.

First, we must make things plain. Ahmadinejad is our enemy. Those who deny this are sadly mistaken. Ahmadinejad is a leader who is extremely vocal and active in his denial and debunking of the Holocaust, and has called for the eradication of Israel, a U.S. ally.

During the presidential election that gave him his power, Ahmadinejad was the only candidate to speak out against future relations with the U. S., and made extreme efforts to ally himself with other anti-U.S. figures, including Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Chavez is the president of a restrictive government that treats its own people as enemies.

However, bringing Ahmadinejad to Columbia University was, academically, the right thing to do. As Elon experienced last year with its own controversial speaker, Tom Monaghan, sometimes to actually learn, and develop our values, it is necessary to hear the words of those with whom we disagree in totality.

Ahmadinejad brought a contrasting point of view to Columbia that is so very alien from the experiences that the average Columbia student.

The correct decision was made when barring Ahmadinejad from “paying his respects” at Ground Zero. There are just too many unaccountable variables and too many propaganda opportunities available to unfriendly elements in the Middle East. It would be far too easy for someone to present Ahmadinejad’s actions as paying respect to the “glorious martyrs.”

We cannot forget that there is a large martyr cult in the Muslim world. Suicide bombers are looked upon much like celebrities are in the Western world. It is hard to believe that Ahmadinejad’s actions were altruistic in the first place.

Finally, did Ahmadinejad receive fair treatment? No. Ahmadinejad was right when stating that he was not being given the benefit of the doubt when speaking at Columbia. President Bollinger’s remarks that preceded President Ahmadinejad’s were not unbiased, but we must ask ourselves, should they have been?

Ahmadinejad is condemned by his own statements. He even mentioned during his speech that Iran does not have a “homosexual problem.” This may be because homosexuality is a capital offense; two men were hanged in a town square in 2005. Ahmadinejad’s presidency is rife with the repealing of the reforms of previous presidents, and a re-establishment of Islamic Shariah law, which led to the separation of male and female elevators, as well as an Islamic reinterpretation of rape.

Because a woman is not “capable” of bearing her own witness, three men must have witnessed and testified to the rape, or it is considered adultery or “acts incompatible with chastity.”

Young girls are publicly hanged because they can not prove their cases to judges who are religious clerics rather than experts in jurisprudence.

To further illustrate the unfairness of this interpretation of Sharia law, men are flogged for the same transgressions that young women are publicly hanged for.

Ahmadinejad’s defiance of international law is astounding. His refusal to suspend the Iranian nuclear project is dangerous at best. It is true, Iran’s nuclear enrichment projects may be peaceful, but when a leader threatens to wipe another country off the map, it is folly to take the chance.

Iran’s actions in the Middle East, such as the support of Shi’ite militia’s in Iraq and Hezbolah in Lebanon do not serve any purpose other than to attack Iran’s enemies. The true danger is that Iran’s interventions may destabilize the region more than we know.

The treatment that Ahmadinejad received at Columbia was on point. He is the leader of a nation whose people are under a strict and unfair legal system. We must not be mistaken, Ahmadinejad did not go to Columbia with expectations of polite academic debate, nor to expand the minds of its students.

This was a propaganda trip meant to embarrass America in the international press. We were expected to be conciliatory and weak. Perhaps we expected the same of ourselves.

Instead, Ahmadinejad was at the mercy of a student body who knew that one of their alumni was in Iranian custody, barred from returning to Columbia to take up a teaching position, because of his dissident values.

Furthermore, while a New York Times reporter estimated 30 percent of the crowd was “pro-Ahmadinejad” the questions from some faculty members were scathing. His integrity was questioned, as was his true understanding of the meaning of free debate.

We must consider what this means to the American psyche. One could argue that we are suffering from a malaise much like that during the Carter administration. While the economy is high, American’s are becoming more and more distant from each other. We perceive a losing war Iraq, and we believe that we are beginning to lose our edge as the world superpower.

Perhaps the dirty little secret is that we needed this. We needed to see a man who is one of our greatest foreign critics get dragged through the mud. We need to have him scolded and attacked in a public forum.

Perhaps the truth is, that we needed to make a show of strength that wasn’t on the battlefield, or in the halls of the United Nations, but one that took place in the classroom.

Staff: - 10/03/07