Yes, I think that yesterday we saw a potent manifestation of the contagion of our era, a mode of how to comport oneself with others that is modeled (MBA-style?) by Mr. Insolence-in-Chief himself. It had the stamp of a particularly neoconnish brand of disdainful arrogance. And it wasn’t coming from the upstart of a world leader from Iran.

I was out of the loop, didn’t even know that Ahmadenijad was speaking at Columbia University yesterday until I heard an extended NPR report* on the event during afternoon drive-time yesterday. Complete with audio excerpts. And I was frankly appalled. Before I, the listener, like the actual live listeners in Columbia’s student audience for the event, even heard a word from the invited speaker, came an introduction by Bollinger that I’m guessing is almost without precedent in the history of guest-speaker introductions ….

[nb: Columbia claims that Iran initiated and requested this speaking engagement for him, but Columbia obliged, as part of their World Leaders Forum, and announced it a week ago to what I discovered belatedly had been the general furor of a) the entire right-wing/Bushie contingency on and off Columbia campus--Bill Kristol advocating boycotts, etc., b) the bulk of the Jewish activist constituency on and off campus, and c) by the weekend, the on-record critiques by both the Deans of Law and Business on Columbia campus, objecting to the invitation having been extended at all. Then, I learned, there was a Scott Pelley interview with Ahmadenijad on 60 Minutes the night before, adding fuel to those who claimed he was getting too much airtime in the US, regardless of whether he was being challenged adequately on his views or not.]

Recall that Lee Bollinger is the one-time clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger [presumably no relation to Weldon Berger] — which would seem to offer him a ‘right-wing credential’ — who went on to become Dean of U of Michigan Law School, subsequently Pres. of U of Michigan, in time to be named defendant in the two famous concurrent affirmative-action cases decided by the Sandra Day O’Connor court [sic] back in 2003, even though by then, he had already left U of M to take his present position in 2002 as President of Columbia University. Presumably all of the latter would seem to potentially undercut whatever ‘right-wing credentials’ he biographically might have had and perhaps even make him a greater target of right-wing venom for having had the gall to go from clerking for a Nixon SCOTUS appointee to standing up for affirmative action nationwide.

Could all this factor into some extra sensitivity by Bollinger to going ‘out on a limb’? Perhaps. Can it account for how he chose to deal with his recent bout of outer limbness? Hm….

I have yet to find a transcript on the web of the entire Columbia talk by Ahmadenijad and the subsequent Q&A, but the transcript of the introduction by Bollinger is definitely available — and has now become the subject of virulent controversy, as evidenced in this NY Times blog of reader reaction (scan down below live blog report on speech).

Like some others at that NYT blog, I must say I was surprised to find as many reader-posters who shared my take on the whole thing, namely that Bollinger had actually managed to make Ahmadenijad look like the reasonable and well-mannered one. Upon hearing the excerpts on NPR of Bollinger speaking, I confess my jaw had dropped, figuratively if not literally. It was the gratuitousness of the rhetoric. Here, again, is the entire Bollinger intro, and here — after a few excerpts of his own prefatory warm-up, are examples in bold of what I found personally to be over the top, especially for being face-to-face (well, presumably profile-to-face) comments introducing a guest speaker in any context anywhere:

President Lee C. Bollinger’s Introductory Remarks at SIPA-World Leaders Forum with President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Sept. 24, 2007

…. Before speaking directly to the current President of Iran, I have a few critically important points to emphasize.

….First….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….

Second, to those who believe that this event never should have happened, that it is inappropriate for the University to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable….

It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament….

Let’s, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated” “legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

….

My question, then, is: Do you plan on wiping us off the map, too? [This I put in bold because the question itself grants to Iran a kind of paranoia-induced status which, to my mind, makes the question itself seem rhetorical and/or pandering to fear.]

….

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.” [In light of the recent controversy over Gen. Petraeus and the credibility of his reporting in light of past bias and misrepresentation, Bollinger's choice to cite him here seems consistent with an overall sense here that Bollinger is seeking to placate the right-wing/Bushies. He could have cited other sources who make similar claims about Iranian arms.]

….

Let me close with this comment. Frankly, and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do. Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country, that this only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country (as in your meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations) so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

First of all, imho, Bollinger would have been better advised to forego his pseudo-confessional “Frankly and in all candor” final comments. They were the particularly gratuitous ‘capper’ to the unnecessary labels (ad hominems, really) in bold earlier in the intro. Introducing a speaker and in your introduction predicting that nothing the speaker will say will meet your own test for credibility is a stark display of exactly the opposite of diplomacy. And presumably that was Bollinger’s chosen tack: Show the critics of his invitation that he was doing the antithesis of diplomacy, that he was there to slap Ahmadenijad in the face, … sources from NPR to NYT called it “startling” and “strident.”

I could hear in Bollinger’s tone and words only CYA at work. CYA for having the temerity to invite Ahmadenijad in the first place, and then CYA ramped up to seek to immunize himself — Bollinger mainly — from any potential critique he might get as being “soft on Holocaust deniers.”

What Bollinger said, in his substantive challenges directed to Ahmadenijad (parts of his intro I did not quote above but encourage you to read in the link), would imho have been quite appropriate as follow-up questions — even potentially hinting in an intro that certain areas such as the Holocaust, nuclear weapons, arms to insurgents, internal executions would be raised in follow-up Qs if Ahmadenijad did not address them in his talk. That to me would have been quite acceptable within the protocol of how you introduce a controversial (and vilified) guest speaker. But Bollinger went far beyond that, to what amounts to ad hominem attack. This in an introduction to a speaker invited to your podium. I must say, Bollinger put Ahmadenijad in the role of victim of sorts and even sympathetic griever when the latter began his own remarks by saying the following (as per NYT cityroom live blog of event):

Updated, 2:07 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad began his speech by reciting verses from the Koran in Arabic. Addressing Dean Coatsworth and the audience, he said he was grateful to God for the opportunity to speak in an academic environment.

Mr. Ahmadinejad began: “At the outset, I want to complain a bit about the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of claims…”

The room erupted in applause.

Mr. Ahmadinejad added: “…and to attempt to provide a vaccination of sorts to our faculty and students. The text, more than addressing me, was an insult to the audience here. In a university environment, we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk, so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.”

It for me was a justified rebuke of Bollinger, and what a sad commentary that in itself makes on the state of free speech in America. Yes, on the one hand, Bollinger defied the constrainers of free speech by inviting Ahmadenijad to speak. But then the still-extant suffocating climate of post-9/11 Ashcroftian/Cheneyite silencing of anything that makes waves led Bollinger to throw all rules of civil behavior out the window by making an introduction that will surely go down in the annals of introductory speechmaking as Exhibit A in how not to do it. Bollinger could have made all his substantive challenges to Ahmadenijad — the alternative to what Bollinger did was not to “treat him with kid gloves,” hardly, but to put the challenges, without the ad hominems or — truly — insults to speaker’s face. Ahmadenijad all on his own, as in his response to a query about treatment of homosexuals in Iran, in which he denied that they exist in Iran, allegedly met with laughter throughout the audience, was capable of showing his true colors and his own various ignorances, without the gratuitous and boomeranging in-your-face rudenesses Bollinger chose to adopt.

* For an interesting recall of how other foreign leaders have been received upon visiting the UN, see also this NPR report.

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