I say let him speak. Not because I support some wanna be dictator's hateful rhetoric. Ahmadinejad is a complete, and total idiot. He should be allowed to speak because it gives American's the opportunity to protest. He gets to see what the people of Iran are unable to do. Watching the news over the past few days, it appears that there are quite a number of groups organizing to protest whatever he has to say. I appreciate those organization having the opportunity to speak out against his rhetoric. He cannot possibly say anything that would be shocking. Prior to his trip to the U.S. he was seen on TV in an old soviet style May Day parade, with military vehicles driving by with "Death to Israel!" and "Death to USA!" written on them.
A good article on Ahmadinejad is here.
Here is another one insinuating that he was involved in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
It's pretty obvious that Ahmadinejad is a nut. Let him speak, it gives a medium for his opposition and we are a free society able to offer different views and options. With that in mind, I have to question why Columbia invites Ahmadinejad to speak at their university, promoting different views on things, where the university has shown a severe lack of support for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
"As Columbia welcomes Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia students who want to serve their country cannot enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Columbia. Columbia students who want to enroll in ROTC must travel to other universities to fulfill their obligations. ROTC has been banned from the Columbia campus since 1969. In 2003, a majority of polled Columbia students supported reinstating ROTC on campus. But in 2005, when the Columbia faculty senate debated the issue, President Bollinger joined the opponents in defeating the effort to invite ROTC back on campus." Source
Also, "Prior to the late 1960s, Columbia’s current anti-US military atmosphere seems to have been almost nonexistent. Indeed, as early as 1916 an ROTC program was instituted on campus, where it matured and grew during the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Korean War, and even part of the Vietnam War era. Producing some of the finest naval officers ever to serve our country, at one point Columbia was actually churning out more Navy ensigns per year than even the US Naval Academy. In 1968, however, the university’s administration expelled all ROTC programs from campus in order to appease the sometimes-violent student protesters who opposed the Vietnam War – one of whom actually decimated Columbia’s ROTC offices with a Molotov cocktail.
The university’s ban on ROTC remained in place until a 1980 decision to not only allow its students to participate in the ROTC program at nearby Fordham University, but also to have a record of ROTC classes displayed on their Columbia transcripts. In 1990 however, this policy came to an end. While Columbia students could still take part in ROTC programs on neighboring college campuses, their transcripts no longer reflected that participation. To this day, ROTC classes are not considered part of the regular curriculum of studies. When the military recently forced Columbia to allow on-campus military recruiting (under the banner of the Solomon Amendment, which allows for the denial of federal funding to colleges that prohibit or prevent ROTC or military recruitment), the university’s president openly urged students not to interview – because of what he called the military’s discrimination against homosexuals." Source
It just seems that Columbia supports anti-American rhetoric, while at the same time doesn't support the military. I have heard talk of the threatening to deny Columbia federal funding. I think that is a fantastic idea. The old 60's radicals who could not get a job other than hidden on a college campus really do not need federal money. If they are so anti-military, I say deny them their public funding. They don't need it.
