Myth And Columbia

It is not a black-and-white issue for me. I wish it was; no doubt it began as one.

When I first heard (last week?) that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to speak at Columbia University yesterday, I was in high dudgeon. Immediately I decried Columbia president Lee Bollinger's decision to permit the man even to visit Columbia's campus. 'How can these things be?' I asked myself, incredulous at such indecency.

But now I am somewhat ambivalent. I applaud Mr. Bollinger for taking a hard-line stand with Mr. Ahmadinejad; I am glad that he called the Iranian president a 'petty and cruel dictator.' Or am I?

Yes, it is good to confront and debate ideas and policies. Yes, it is noble to challenge the zeitgeist; to take a moral stand in the face of evil. But there are dangers, very subtle dangers, in taking the 'higher road.' Two such dangers come to mind this morning.

The first is to confuse calling a guest at an American university a "petty dictator" significant or even courageous. On one level it is plainly bad manners. On another level it is the sort of spoken deed that is really a boast and conceit: look at us confront! look at us fight! look at us inquire, challenge, decry! (We must also not forget that other great conceit: look at how tolerant we are! see how open-minded we can be! look at the depth of our understanding!)

Is Lee Bollinger really a fighter? Is he really courageous? Yes, of course he is. At the very least, he is willing to speak in a manner that might offend supporters of the Iranian president who live, work and study in the west, particularly on the west side of Manhattan. But is insulting a guest in one's own parlor anything like a bold confrontation, particularly when the guest expects it, even desires it? What about Mr. Bollinger traveling to Tehran to berate the Iranian president? What about him standing in Mr. Ahmadinejad's own parlor and pompously declaring his Iranian host "uneducated"?

What I am ultimately saying is that I fear some Americans think the country has now "dealt" with Mr. Ahmadinejad, that we have torn off his mask, shown him to the world as an ego-maniacal simpleton, and sent him on his way, duly chastised, duly warned. We have faced evil, confronted it, stared it down; we have shown evil and ignorance the face of goodness and knowledge.

But we have done no such thing at all.

Secondly, we have ineluctably fallen prey to a new mythology: The Iranian president came to America in peace, but the peacemaker was mocked, abused, ridiculed! He came with an olive branch, but he will leave having been scourged with that very symbol of peace! The fodder for propaganda is perhaps now even more abundant than ever. Had Mr. Ahmadinejad been kept at a safe distance, his propaganda could only reach so far. But now he has proof -- soundbites and vidclips -- that America is a capricious host, a divided and unfriendly place, full of spies (he called one reporter a CIA interrogator), dripping with sarcasm, antagonistic towards peace. He is that peace; his is a peaceful nation.

How sad, even tragic -- or so the chorus will sing -- that America -- and its Jewish constituency, no doubt -- should have rejected a 'noble' man bringing such a noble, gentle peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.