[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 143 (Tuesday, September 25, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12016-S12017]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FORUM FOR THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise as an alumni of Columbia College to 
ask a question which I suspect is on the mind of a lot of the alumni of 
Columbia College and probably a lot of average Americans wandering 
around the country, which is, why did they create a forum for the 
President of Iran in a way that basically almost made him look like a 
sympathetic figure because of the actions of the President of the 
college? Open dialog on our campuses is important. We all recognize 
that. In fact, it is the essence of a good education. Columbia has a 
strong history, ironically, of having an extraordinary curriculum 
called a core curriculum which requires you to study all sorts of 
subjects whether you want to study them or not so that you gain 
knowledge in a variety of different areas and are exposed to a variety 
of different areas.

  I have always believed that core curriculum was one of the great 
strengths of the college and was certainly one of the things I most 
enjoyed while I was there. So open discussion and having people on the 
campus who have an opinion which is antithetical to the values of our 
society is, I suppose, reasonable. But you have to put it in the 
context of what other discussion is allowed on our allegedly elite 
university campuses or even some campuses which are maybe Ivy League; 
that is, if you have a view which is conservative and you happen to 
want to express that opinion, you are quite often limited as to your 
ability to speak on those campuses. I, for example, suspect it would be 
very hard to get a date for Donald Rumsfeld to speak at Columbia. I 
suspect it would be probably even more difficult to get a date for the 
President of the United States to speak at Columbia. I am absolutely 
sure the Vice President of the United States would never be invited to 
speak at Columbia.
  So one has to ask the question, Why did they decide to give a forum 
to an individual who is running a government of a country, the purpose 
of which is to develop a nuclear weapon, which nuclear weapon and 
weapons will be used to threaten world stability and clearly threaten 
their neighbors in the Middle East? Ahmadi-Nejad has said he intends to 
eliminate Israel. In his speech yesterday, he affirmed his view that 
the Holocaust was a theoretical event, maybe never happened--an absurd 
statement. Yesterday, he went so far as to even describe his whole 
society as having nobody of a homosexual persuasion. He is leading a 
terrorist nation, or a terrorist government--the nation itself isn't 
terrorist, I suspect--but a terrorist government which is in the 
process of arming people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers. Yet 
Columbia invites him and gives him a forum in which to spread his 
values, to the extent you can call them values, or his views. It seems 
ironic and inconsistent and highly inappropriate in the context of what 
Columbia would not allow in the area of open discussion, which would be 
to have, for example, the Vice President of the United States speak, I 
suspect.
  Then, to compound this error--the President of Iran is going to have 
his forum today at the U.N. Columbia did not have to give him an 
additional forum--but to compound that error, the president of the 
university was so egregious in the way he handled the situation, in my 
opinion, that he actually almost made the President of Iran look 
somewhat sympathetic, which is almost impossible to do. The attitude of 
arrogance and officiousness and the posturing of positions and 
questions by the president of Columbia in a way that basically gave 
Ahmadi-Nejad the opportunity to basically respond as if he were being 
coherent--because the questions and the attacks were so aggressive in a 
way that was arrogant and inappropriate, even in dealing with

[[Page S12017]]

somebody like Ahmadi-Nejad--was a startling failure of leadership at 
the university by the president of the university.
  As an alumni, I was embarrassed, to put it quite simply. I was 
embarrassed by the fact that they would choose to give this individual 
such a forum, this individual who will probably, for my children, my 
children's children, and maybe even our generation, be the most 
significant threat to world peace that we have as soon as he develops 
his nuclear weapon, which he is on course to do, and then to compound 
that by setting up the forum in a way where the president of the 
university basically went way beyond what would be considered to be a 
coherent and thoughtful and balanced approach to addressing this 
individual. It would have been much more effective had the president of 
the university simply allowed the President of Iran to make his 
statement and, by his own statement, indict himself because that is 
exactly what he would have done, and he did. But, unfortunately, rather 
than the President of Iran becoming the issue, which he should be, the 
president of the university made himself part of the story and the 
issue.
  It was not a good day for Columbia or for alumni of Columbia, in my 
humble opinion, and it speaks volumes about the level to which the 
universities in our country, especially those which proclaim themselves 
elite, have sunk in the area of setting up open and free dialog 
because, as I said, as has been seen in various universities across 
this country, conservative thought would not have been given the type 
of forum this militaristic individual, whose purpose it is to 
essentially destabilize the world through the use of nuclear weapons, 
was given. Others would not be given such a forum.
  So it is with regret that I rise today to ask why--again, why--why 
did Columbia pursue this course and why did the president of the 
university pursue the course he pursued in responding to the attendance 
of the President of Iran on his campus?
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan is 
recognized.

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