Barry Rosen, executive director of public and external affairs at Borough of Manhattan Community College, was a hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981. He studied Iranian culture at Columbia University.
I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University tomorrow.
They instilled the belief in all of us: Everyone has the right of free speech.
But I believe they’d be in a quandary about this one. I’d certainly like to talk to James Madison, who drafted our Bill of Rights, and ask him whether Ahmadinejad deserves that right.
Ahmadinejad is a reprehensible leader who violates free speech in his own country and cracks down on those Iranians who attempt to open up his repressive regime.
He uses speech to spread age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes in the Middle East, denying the existence of Israel, and denies that the Holocaust ever happened.
Ahmadinejad was one of those outrageous Iranians who took me and more than 50 other Americans hostage for 444 days, violating international law and making us suffer indescribable moments of terror.
There is simply no reason to give him a platform to spew his venom.
No matter how hard-hitting Columbia’s president questions Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader is a winner.
Every word he utters is meant for his radical constituents at home and legitimizes his standing among other dictators like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
It’s only when Ahmadinejad permits his own people to march and speak freely, that I believe Columbia President Lee Bollinger would be justified in giving the Iranian president an open forum.
Not before then.