If today proves anything, it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead of us,” he said, referring to the “critical and complex” role of Iran in world geopolitics.
In a remarkable and wide-ranging talk, with Mr. Ahmadinejad sitting just feet from him, Mr. Bollinger gave a passionate defense of free speech.
Mr. Bollinger said that since 2003, the World Leaders Forum had been a “major forum for robust debate” on global issues. “It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore” implies an endorsement of those ideas or a naïveté about the potential dangers of those ideas, he said.
“To those who believe that this event should never have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable.” He said, “It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” He added, “This is the right thing to do and indeed, it is required by the existing norms of free speech, of Columbia University” and of academic institutions.
He added that he regretted if people were hurt by the speech, and he called for the “intellectual and emotional courage” to “confront the mind of evil.”
As academic institutions, he added, “We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds.”
Mr. Bollinger then confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad on the crackdown of Iran’s scholars and intellectuals. He asserted that Iran had a poor human rights record and that “Iran leads the world in executing minors.” He also spoke of a “wider crackdown” on student activists, including the jailing and forced retirement of scholars.
Mr. Bollinger asked Mr. Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator, and so I ask you, and so I ask you, why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?”
He asked whether Mr. Ahmadinejad was using a nuclear confrontation with the West to distract from his incompetent leadership at home. He also asked to be allowed to lead a delegation of scholars to Iran to speak freely, as Mr. Ahmadinejad can do today.
He confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad over his description of the Holocaust as “a fabricated legend,” calling him either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” He called Columbia a world center of Jewish studies that since the 1930s has provided a home for Jewish refugees. He called the Holocaust “the most documented event in human history.”
In the style of a relentless cross-examination, Mr. Bollinger confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad over his statements about wiping Israel “off the face of the map” and on allegations that Iran has provided financing and support to terrorist groups.
“Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region?” he asked.
Mr. Bollinger, finally, confronted Iran about its aid to Shiite militias in Iraq and about its nuclear buildup.
“You continue to defy the world body” by claiming peaceful intent in a nuclear program while the world expresses concern about Iran’s military aims, Mr. Bollinger said.
Mr. Bollinger concluded: “Frankly, and in all candor Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions, but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes what you say and do.”
He added that he believed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s failure to provide answers would only undermine the hard-line regime’s power in Iran.
“Today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for,” Mr. Bollinger told Mr. Ahmadinejad. “I only wish I could do better.”
The auditorium erupted in thunderous applause.
