We know what we're doing

A helicopter periodically circled overhead, causing students to crane their necks toward the giant screen as University President Lee Bollinger traded barbs with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The chopper, along with guards at every entrance demanding identification, reminded me more of intifada-era Jerusalem than a cushy New York campus. Yet again, ideological shrapnel from the Middle East has drawn national attention to Columbia University.

In my four years at this Ivy League school, it has become a target for dominant neo-conservative discourse in America, and a shrill mass of New York's Jewish community. In the two days leading up to Ahmadinejad's visit, hundreds of protestors, mostly pro-Israel supporters, crowded in front of Columbia's gates to denounce the school for inviting the Iranian leader. Camera crews from Fox, CNN, the BBC, even Spanish Univision and al-Jazeera began to canvass the campus and the streets outside, sometimes doubling the number of protestors.

At the heart of this media spectacle lies an effort to discredit the American academe and any contribution it might make to the debate on the Middle East. Ironically, Ahmadinejad's speech and reception proved that Columbia's opponents are misguided.

The main accusation was that Columbia "gave evil a platform to speak." Many propagandists took this and ran, spreading the libel that higher learning in America hates Israel, coddles terrorists, and lacks any moral judgment on the issues at stake. In short, that it is worthless. The controversy over Columbia's Middle East scholars three years ago produced the loudest of these allegations until now.

I would invite my fellow American Jews (particularly in New York) to stop shouting, take a breath, and think about their response. Three years ago, the overzealousness of this group managed to turn an unknown professor, whose scholarship about Israel is amateurish and exaggerated, into a hero a free speech. Legitimate challenges to his scholarship were drowned out by a chorus of paranoia and non-sense. In a city where the daily newspapers and politicians of every stripe came out against the professor, the pro-Israel lobby came off looking like an overbearing Goliath, all the while calling themselves "David." Academics who knew nothing about Israel saw themselves threatened by this censoring bloc, powerfully aligned with the neo-con government in Washington.

Then, as now, both Jews and conservatives missed the mark about academia. In his speech, Bollinger noted that "We don't have access to the levers of power, we cannot make war or peace, we can only make minds." But in that vein, we do have informative things to say about the Middle East. We were right to question the motives of the Iraq War, and, having read a book or two, we predicted the impossibility of building a democratic utopia out of Sunnis and Shias, which so confounds Bush and his spinsters.

We do not oppose Bush's scheme for the Middle East out of treacherous liberalism, but rather because the simplistic and bellicose nature of his one-track ideology makes it doomed to fail, in Iraq or anywhere else.

American Jews need to realize this and get off the bandwagon. It may feel great to have an Evangelical waving an Israeli flag next to you, but polls show most Americans are tiring of this defunct worldview. It is dangerous and incorrect to equate Israel's interests with American conservatives', no matter how much they pander to the Jewish vote. In fact, if these American Jews were to vote in Israel, the uninformed extremity of their views would make them as much of a frightening joke as Avigdor Lieberman.

But the scary leader of the day is Ahmadinejad. Bollinger gave the best defense of his invitation, saying it did not equate to "our naivety of the very real danger of his ideas" but to our "intellectual and emotional courage to confront evil." After the now-famous "cruel and petty dictator" zinger, Bollinger identified Columbia with Israel ("Do you plan to wipe us off the map, too?"), and finished his incisive challenges with a pragmatic statement: "I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions." But the last time Ahmadinejad spoke in the U.S., his outlandish comments about the Holocaust and Israel so embarrassed the Iranians, analysts believed it led to his party's subsequent loss in Tehran's mayoral elections. "May this do that and more," Bollinger concluded.

Thank God an academic as intelligent as Bollinger debated Ahmadinejad, and not George Bush, as the Iranian has urged. In addition to being a Holocaust denier, terrorist supporter, and child murderer, Ahmadinejad is, above all, a smart-ass. It is on this account that he offers all these Western interviews and debates. Like many effective evil men, he is clever enough to know his opponents underestimate his wits. After dodging whether or not he wants to destroy Israel, the moderator demanded Ahmadinejad give a "yes or no" answer. He quickly quipped, "You ask a question, and you want the answer the way you want to hear it. Is this your freedom of information? Yes or no?"

Despite these and other barbs, the forum challenged Ahmadinejad on his own terms. It showed that he is skillful at appropriating legitimate criticism of American foreign policy, but that ultimately, his vision for the Middle East is nonsense. After his "there are no homosexuals in Iran" comment, one can see his ego shrink off his wincing face.

Those who truly oppose Ahmadinejad, or support Israel, must think critically about what to say and what to silence, and act with their minds instead of their temper. Despite what you hear, a Columbia education can make one better able to understand today's threats and confront them.