Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, spoke at Columbia University yesterday and fortunately there were no reports of anyone being tasered. Ahmadinejad claimed that there are no homosexuals in Iran and the Holocaust is more theory than fact (see the NY Times). Iranian Truth ran a post debunking Ahmadinejad's absurd assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran by pointing out that Iran's president obviously hasn't seen the CBC special entitled, Inside Iran's Secret Gay World.
The assertion about the Holocaust being more theory than fact is simply ridiculous. The President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, had this to say in his opening remarks about Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust:
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 have come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. You should know -- (applause) -- please -- you should know that Columbia is the world center of Jewish studies -- us a world center, and now in partnership with the -- Institute of Holocaust Studies.
Since the 1930s, we provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the debate over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity's capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue's first line of defense. Will you cease this outrage?
A transcript of Bollinger's opening remarks can be found here.
As an update, Bollinger defended his introduction to President Ahmadinejad in an interview with NPR today. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14742209&ft=1&f=1001
Posted by: Wendy Jackson | September 26, 2007 at 07:34 PM