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Lee Bollinger rips Ahmadinejad a new one.

Cello Man said:
Do you mean John Le Carre? If that's the case you can hardly blame him for missing "a la Carte". It rhymes out loud but written down it's not quite obvious.
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Well, I didn't say it was a GOOD joke, did I?:cool:
 
I have joeellison on ignore, but gleaned what he was getting at from Randfan's responses.

Let me just say this since there seems to be a lot of it going around lately, but the whole "but what if it was the other guy" argument is asinine and tired. Sometimes it is called for, but most of the time I've seen it lately has been in partisan tit-for-tat crap.

"Waaaaah, but he wouldn't have done that if Bush was the speaker, waaah".

Grow up, or better yet, post on another forum where bad reasoning is a good form of argument.

First we get equivocation arguments about Colombia letting him speak in the first place. Now we get Iran apologists mad about the comments made. Enough is enough.
 
JoeEllison said:
Got to disagree with you there. Not that what he said wasn't true, but the time and place was wrong.
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Another quote from a Forum member's sig comes to mind: "The time is always right to do the right thing." MLK Jr. (paraphrase from memory)

Besides, how many chances does one get to openly debate a world leader who seems to thrive on bad ideas? I doubt Bollinger would have the same chance in Iran without the threat of torture and/or execution. Regardless of time and place, it needed to be said. Ahmadinejad needs to know that people won't bend over backwards on his every whim.

P.S. Nice bike.
 
Cello Man said:
Another quote from a Forum member's sig comes to mind: "The time is always right to do the right thing." MLK Jr. (paraphrase from memory)

Besides, how many chances does one get to openly debate a world leader who seems to thrive on bad ideas? I doubt Bollinger would have the same chance in Iran without the threat of torture and/or execution. Regardless of time and place, it needed to be said. Ahmadinejad needs to know that people won't bend over backwards on his every whim.

P.S. Nice bike.
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Hey, it wasn't a debate. And, you know, Columbia invited him. They didn't need to do that.

Would you invite someone to your house who you didn't like, just to insult them? He could have done the invite without the insult, or the insult without the invite. Doing both seems kind of stupid and pointless to me.

To go back to the OP and the mention of Bush... I'd never invite Bush anywhere, or agree to introduce him for anything. I wouldn't imagine using an official job function in order to seek out and insult people I dislike...


... unless I was on The Daily Show, of course.
:D
 
Bollinger was rude, presumptuous, impolite, insulting, rebarbative, combative, arrogant, patronising, and insolent.

Yay for the Prexy! Give us more, Dr. B!
 
JoeEllison said:
I don't think you're being accurate about "liberals". I'm pretty sure that most people would object to someone calling anyone an idiot before they speak in this sort of setting. It is OK to rip BOTH men... I don't think that you do that in that exact context. Bollinger was acting as a representative of the school, introducing a guest of the school. In that context, as much as he might feel about anyone, as right as he might be, and even as much as I might want to see someone do that to Bush, it was inappropriate for him to do that at that time and place.
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What Bollinger did was exceptionally rude. Poisoning the Well. Mahmoud, as much as I dislike him, had reason to be offended. He was set up, to put it bluntly. Perhaps he expected it.

Bollinger could have saved his remarks for the end of the session, in the summing up, rather than invite him and then publicly attack him in an academic setting. The Q & A was sure to expose Mahmoud's rubbish, and anything missed Bollinger could have covered in the summing up.

Bad form. For all that I don't care who takes the piss out of Mahmoud the Mouth, this was not well played.

For clarification: I am hardly "a liberal" but I generally agree with Thomas C's sense of what was wrong.

ETA: Dear Cello Man and sackett. President's of prestigious Universities are supposed to be classy people, and what Bollinger did, in terms of style, was gauche. The summing up was a perfectly good time to point out Mahmoud's duplicity, once the collegial discussion and Q & A that He Was Invited To Come For as a Guest of The University, was complete. The substance of Bollinger's points was solid enough.

DR
 
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I agree with Darth wholeheartedly. You don't invite someone to be a guest at your university and then excoriate him as an introduction. I am no liberal and I am no defender of Ahmadinejad, but that behavior is inexcusable, particularly coming from a dean who defended his invitation to Ahmadinejad in the name of international diplomacy. What tenet of international diplomacy makes one think it's a good idea to be a poor host?

Fortunately, Ahmadinejad squandered his martyr-card on holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracies and homophobia.
 
DR, when you say that "presidents of prestigious universities are supposed to be classy people," I think you're making an unwarrented assumption -- an assumption lacking supporting evidence, in fact.

I don't know what univ. presidents are supposed to be. During a long life in academia, I've got a load of several. I'm trying to recall if one or more of them ever showed class.

Let's try this: "Presidents of anciently civilized countries are supposed to be classy people." Nope, doesn't work either.
 
Sackett,

Let's try this one.

One of the roles of an American University president is to not piss off the alumni who give them donations. I know at least ten Columbia U alumni who have said they won't donate the their alma mater as long as this president is in charge, based on the astounding lack of leadership skills displayed in the last week.

Obviously, this represents mere anecdotal evidence. So let's see what happens to the donations in the future and see if Bollinger managed at least this aspect of his job.
 
marksman said:
Sackett,

Let's try this one.

One of the roles of an American University president is to not piss off the alumni who give them donations. I know at least ten Columbia U alumni who have said they won't donate the their alma mater as long as this president is in charge, based on the astounding lack of leadership skills displayed in the last week.

Obviously, this represents mere anecdotal evidence. So let's see what happens to the donations in the future and see if Bollinger managed at least this aspect of his job.
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There were Alumni that did want Ahmadinejad there in the first place and were threating to pull donations.
 
sackett said:
DR, when you say that "presidents of prestigious universities are supposed to be classy people," I think you're making an unwarrented assumption -- an assumption lacking supporting evidence, in fact.

I don't know what univ. presidents are supposed to be. During a long life in academia, I've got a load of several. I'm trying to recall if one or more of them ever showed class.

Let's try this: "Presidents of anciently civilized countries are supposed to be classy people." Nope, doesn't work either.
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That is a fair critique of my statement, and accepted. Marksman covered the role expected of hosts, and international protocol.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
What Bollinger did was exceptionally rude. Poisoning the Well. Mahmoud, as much as I dislike him, had reason to be offended. He was set up, to put it bluntly. Perhaps he expected it.

Bollinger could have saved his remarks for the end of the session, in the summing up, rather than invite him and then publicly attack him in an academic setting. The Q & A was sure to expose Mahmoud's rubbish, and anything missed Bollinger could have covered in the summing up.

Bad form. For all that I don't care who takes the piss out of Mahmoud the Mouth, this was not well played.

For clarification: I am hardly "a liberal" but I generally agree with Thomas C's sense of what was wrong.

ETA: Dear Cello Man and sackett. President's of prestigious Universities are supposed to be classy people, and what Bollinger did, in terms of style, was gauche. The summing up was a perfectly good time to point out Mahmoud's duplicity, once the collegial discussion and Q & A that He Was Invited To Come For as a Guest of The University, was complete. The substance of Bollinger's points was solid enough.

DR
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This can't be good, I agree with everything you are saying here.
 
RandFan said:
There were Alumni that did want Ahmadinejad there in the first place and were threating to pull donations.
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And do you think they were happy that, having invited him, Bollinger rhetorically spat in his face?

Look, if you invite someone to your university, you treat him with hospitality. Bollinger's actions did not reflect well on Columbia University. Makes me glad I went to Penn. :)
 
Darth Rotor said:
What Bollinger did was exceptionally rude. Poisoning the Well. Mahmoud, as much as I dislike him, had reason to be offended. He was set up, to put it bluntly. Perhaps he expected it.
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You know what else? Now, he gets to go home and dismiss American objections to his words, and Bollinger gave him the means to do it. He really CAN say that he was set up, that he was not given a fair forum, and that the entire thing was an expression of Western arrogance and even bigotry...not because it is true, but because Bollinger gave him enough of a soundbite to make it seem true.

Not saying that he wouldn't have anyways, but why give him a good excuse?
 
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