Thursday, November 1, 2007

Freedom of Speech Defended

Columbia University recently invited Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus and submit to a Q/A session. For this, the University has taken a lot of flack in conservative quarters for giving Ahmadinejad a public forum from which to speak. I, however, was delighted that the invitation was extended. Certainly not because I am any fan of Ahmadinejad and his positions. Rather, I do think he is an ill-informed political ignorant given what he has said are his beliefs and his views of the world that surrounds him. (Then again, we fail to acknowledge that we are generally quite similarly ignorant of the world, belief systems and cultural history from which he comes.) But by extending this invitation, we demonstrated to him (and the citizens of Iran and the world) what freedom of speech really means in this country, versus in Iran; we created the opportunity to Q/A a national leader in an open, non-staged debate (something our U.S. President has shown no willingness to do), versus in Iran; and we allowed that national leader the opportunity to make his case for his beliefs, or to fail, through civil discourse, versus in Iran. And in this instance, Ahmadinejad managed to fail miserably to convince, almost to the point of the laughable.

It is a shame that this important example of democratic free speech was lessened by the self-serving, uncivil and rude introduction of Ahmadinejad given by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. It was, nevertheless, an otherwise “America at its best” moment: our willingness and ability to let hate and ignorance fail on its own through the light of the spotlight rather than exist in isolated darkness. Hard as it may be at times, requiring the courage of our willingness to air that with which we disagree, it is still what we are to be about: the faith that extremes will ultimately be exposed for what they are, and that truth ultimately wins out. Or, as a quote stated that I read in an unlikely place, “If we don’t protect freedom of speech, we’ll never know who the idiots are.” The reality is that we are never able to create an effective dialog, or reach a negotiated conclusion, with another individual until we first at least understand what that person thinks, and why she/he thinks it, no matter how foreign those may be to our own background and thought process. We must first listen before we speak. Only from that basis can effective dialog begin.

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