Reuters article - Iranian students call president "dictator"

TEHRAN (Reuters) - More than 100 students scuffled with police and hardline supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday on Tehran University campus and chanted "Death to the dictator" outside a hall where the Iranian president spoke.

for full story click here.

Pseudo-event?

J-school professor Stephen Isaacs slammed Ahmadinejad's visit as a publicity stunt for Columbia. He said the speech matched the four criteria for a "pseudo-event," as described in Daniel Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America." A "pseudo-event" is:

Not spontaneous
Planned for the purpose of being reported
Ambiguous
and a Self-fulfilling prophecy

He said the real story is the story behind the story.

Iranian Blogs

To read selected posts from Iranian blogs on about the event, click here for the New York Times roundup.

Reflections on the speech, the media, why the event was blocked from Iranian television, and more.

Iranian Academic Leaders Question Bollinger

In a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, the chancellors of Iranian universities criticize Bollinger's treatment of democratically-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

They write that the introductory remarks were filled with "hate and disgust" as well as "unsubstantiated allegations."

Also in the letter, they ask several questions of Bollinger to "help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth."

The full letter with one question about the US media's handling of Ahmadinejad's appearance and nine questions about US foreign policy is available here.

Perhaps the Iranian university chancellors will also address a letter to 60 Minutes. At the end of the interview that aired on Sunday, September 23, Ahmadinejad responded to reporter Scott Pelley's repeated demands for a yes or no answer on nuclear testing, "This is not Guantanamo Bay. This is not a Baghdad prison. Please, this is not a secret prison in Europe. This is not Abu Ghraib. This is Iran. I'm the president of this country!"

Ahmadinejad Invites U.N. Inspectors to Search for Homosexuals

From the borowitzreport.com (note this article had no permanent link and might move to a different location later on).

Hillel prepped for Iranian president's visit

On Sunday evening, Hillel, the Jewish student group on campus, organized several training sessions to get Jewish students ready to rally. One session, called "Making Monday Matter!" crystallized a particular message for students to spread at the anti-Ahmadinejad protest:

“The goal … is not necessarily to educate your peers but to control the contours of the debate or conversation that plays out tomorrow on your campus,” said Natalie Menaged, managing director of Hasbara Fellowships, a pro-Israel group. “What we’re really doing in a way is we’re practicing public relations. We’re projecting a certain image.”

Menaged boiled down the basics: Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map and is part of a government that supports terrorism and abuses human rights.

“You want to send a message to the world that Ahmadinejad’s destructive views need to be taken seriously,” she said.

To bolster these points, Menaged threw out a few facts: In 2005, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be destroyed. Last year, his country supplied arms to Lebanon’s terrorist group, Hezbollah. His government still stones Iranian prisoners to death as a means of capital punishment and he touts a double standard on free speech.

“The Iranian president approached Columbia about being given this platform to speak freely,” Menaged said, “when he wouldn’t allow students or anybody to speak freely in Iran.”

“Won’t people argue that it would be dropping to his level if we were not to give him a platform to speak?” asked Ben Ludman, a lean 21-year-old freshman who lived in Israel before coming to Columbia.

Menaged paused for a second.

“We’re not saying he should be denied,” she said. “We’re saying it’s interesting how he has a double standard. You make a good point though.”

She moved on.

“If somebody asks you about Israel, you might want to say something like: ‘That’s not the issue, the issue is,’ or, ‘what you really need to keep in mind is’,” she said. “Pivot away from anyone who’s criticizing the U.S. or Israel because the facts here show the entire world is united in its trepidation over [Iran].”

The next day at the rally, few students said they'd actually used the talking points. But Amital Isaac, 18, had an interesting take on the training:

"I haven’t really used the talking points,” she said. "I think the advice was better for a more confrontational setting. But this is pretty peaceful."

She continued: "We might not have used the public relations skills, but we were composed and we were together. We should be proud."

The Security of Free Speech

Almost one year ago, student protesters stormed the stage in Columbia’s Roone Arledge Auditorium when controversial Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist took the podium to speak.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the even more controversial president of Iran, took the same stage Monday, Columbia was better prepared. Uniformed police officers, intelligence officers, Secret Service, and the FBI monitored campus and the surrounding streets. Silver barriers lined Broadway Avenue between 113th and 116th streets, and 114th Street was closed to cars.

The protesters—police estimated 1,000 total—clustered at Columbia’s main gate on 116th Street and Broadway Avenue. A man flew Israel’s flag on his back. Taxis and a Fresh Direct truck beeped as they drove slowly by a “Honk if you hate terrorists” sign. Police officers stood ready with billy clubs tucked into their belts

Students approaching the main gate had to elbow their way through a forest of signs and dodge the pamphlets thrust at them. An officer with a bullhorn bellowed, “Show your ID card.” Associate Vice President for Public Safety Jim McShane sent a campus-wide e-mail last Friday warning that entry would be restricted to those with a Columbia ID.

Raphael Levy, a junior, said the event was more exciting than annoying. “I tried to stay away from the mob,” he said. But he did join other students who packed the ledge overlooking 116th street, staring at the protesters below. “I heard people got into fights,” he said, although he hadn’t seen any himself. Police said there were no arrests.

Ahmadinejad’s visit was notable not just for what he said but also for the ease with which he said it. The wheels of free speech were oiled by NYPD Intel and Secret Service in their shiny black suits, by police officers with billy clubs, and by Columbia officials shutting the gates to anyone without a University ID.

Campus protests: an audio slide show

I got caught up in other things, but finally managed to finish the promised audio slide show with Betwa:

Meet Josef, Mikki, Matthew and Fatemeh, four different faces of students protesting, and listen to some Hebrew singing and accordion and banjo playing.

IMPORTANT: this was made in Flash, which YouTube kind of distorts, so I posted the much snazzier original version to my website - you should check it out.


By Mathilde Piard and Betwa Sharma

More protest photos

Here are the rest of my photos

What Did the Students Make of Monday's Event?

Monday is not quite over at Columbia University, but to many students, it might as well be. The main event of the day, and possibly of the year, has passed through campus without leaving a visible trace. After days of protests from students, activists, religious organizations and others, the controversial leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressed hundreds of students during his first visit to the university. A few hours after his speech, attendees were left to wonder if the event had been worth all the fuss.

Last Saturday evening Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus was eerily quiet. The moon shed its light on the school's imposing Bartle Library as a few lingering students enjoyed the mild September weather; they conversed cheerfully, seemingly unaware of the chaos that threatened to unravel two days later.

Sunday came and something in the air felt different in the area around 116th Street and Broadway. Music could be heard everywhere - an Armenian festival was taking place - but what caught every student's attention were the unrelated protest posters that had been taped all over campus: images of executions and tortured men accompanied by alarming quotes, such as “we did not have a revolution in order to have a democracy.”

In the afternoon, television crews began to prepare their cameras for what some students felt would be a big day. "I have an impending sense of doom and badness about today and I don't wanna be anywhere near but I have to," said Sarah Rivette, a journalism student who had to cover the event for a class.

And so the time has come. Ajmadinejad has set foot on this leading institution's campus and was confronted by a number of questions from opinionated scholars. Despite all the clamor leading to this day, he has arrived, spoken, and moved on to the next event in his agenda: the United Nations General Assembly. But the students remain on campus, discussing the wide spectrum of views expressed today.

Some students believed that by visiting Columbia, the Holocaust denier only gained airtime, and not additional supporters of his questionable views. According to Jackson Nurmi, a biomedicine student, Ahmadinejad would have “come out clean” and “been able to manipulate, kind of, the general liberal views of a lot of the people on campus” had he avoided his denial of homosexuals in Iran and of the Holocaust.

Others focused on the Iranian leader's ability to answer evasively. “He skirted a lot of the questions, but he did what every politician does so I don’t have less or more respect than I would for Bush or Cheney,” said Mehmet Bozatli, a twenty-nine-year-old student from Turkey.

But despite the harsh criticism and blatant laughter that was heard during the speech, students were happy to hear the statements from “the mouth of the beast” and not from “the propaganda machine,” in the words of Bozatli.

Ahmadinejad did speak his mind on a number of issues, ranging from women’s rights in Iran to the nation’s nuclear activity to the prosecution of homosexuals, but not necessarily answering what the moderator had asked him. Today was “an awesome opportunity to find out what he actually believes from himself because in the media you only get the bits and pieces,” said Dueaa Elzin, who is seventeen years old and expects to graduate from Columbia in 2011.

As revealed during today’s forum, the president of Iran believes that there are no gay people in his country. “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” he said, eliciting both laughter and gasps from the audience. To Nina Cohen, a history and religion student at Columbia, Ahmadinejad’s speech “said nothing. Some of his comments elicited laughter from the audience they were so ridiculous,” said the twenty-one-year-old student. “If anything, they de-legitimized him and his opinions and it also brought the Columbia community together in defiance of his beliefs, so I do think that this was a good step for the university.”

Now that most students have gone home, leaving the Morningside campus as desolate as it was last Saturday, one idea prevails: neither the event nor the infamous leader were as bad as they promised to be. “It wasn’t as earthshaking as people wanted,” said Gazelle Javantash, an Iranian student at Columbia’s School of International Affairs. “They were expecting some crazy, fire-y speech, a reason to hate him more than they already do.”

Click here to view a slideshow of protest images.