Columbia University President Lee Bollinger

[sohotrightnow]

People do realize that Bollinger is Jewish and that he was excoriated in the Iranian community for his remarks.

[Sonny]

For the sake of argument, let us examine the logic.

Your claim requires bathroom graffiti to share similar, if not the same, legal space as a human giving a speech, even if he\she is a bit of a loon.

Bathroom graffiti is not protected speech.

Neither is a speech on a private collegiate campus.

Columbia is a private institution. They can pick and choose what they want to do. No problem there, but I do think it's hypocritical.

Nor does bathroom graffiti further the public debate in a meaningful way, as Mr. Ahmadinejad's appearance did. That we are still discussing his appearance is further evidence of this fact. I digress.

Graffiti on a bathroom wall is a threat that can't be tolerated, but lets give Ahmadinejad a public platform on US soil to spew his "hate" and score points with the folks back at home.

Anti-semitism is OK in front of the microphone, but not in the bathrooms. Sorry, I don't follow that logic at all.

[Beta]

Anti-semitism is OK in front of the microphone, but not in the bathrooms. Sorry, I don't follow that logic at all.

True dat. I mean I can't imagine Columbia letting the leader of the KKK up there to speak...why let someone who says/does similar things up there just because he has "President" in front of the public name?

[Adam Gamradt]

Actually Beta, Columbia also recently allowed the College Republicans to have two reformed terrorists speak, and a former Nazi.

Sonny, so the point of your post is that he shouldn't have been allowed to speak in the first place? Didn't we already have a thread going on that subject?

I still argue that a dialog, even with the enemies of reason, is better than simply ignoring them.

I'm siding with President Bollinger here, and will allow his words to speak for me.

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas."

Here is the full text of his remarks.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/l ... marks.html