Gatecrashing Ahmadinejad's Columbia Speech

Yesterday I snuck my way in to Iranian president Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University. Well, not snuck exactly- my name was on the RSVP list and I had a printout of my confirmation, but it was only with the help of an "inside man" that I was able to arrange it- alumni of Columbia (which I am) were not invited, just students and faculty.

It was a pretty fascinating experience. I had to push through protesters and a throng of media in order to get to the entrance of Lerner Hall, the student center where he gave the speech. In the lobby, I could hear the university publicist talking on his cell phone, using similar language to that I hear in the entertainment media world: "Yeah, well i think the USA Today editorial really helped us, and Brian Lehrer's commentary on WNYC worked in our favor as well, so i think we're in pretty good shape going into this afternoon..." etc.

As has been reported widely, CU president Lee Bollinger gave a blistering introduction- I am surprised that Ahmadinejad was able to keep his cool (although the first portion of his remarks was a gripe about said intro). He then launched into a rambling discourse on the origins and benefits of science, followed by some oft-repeated complaints about how the west has misused and monopolized science for their own nefarious purposes. I'll leave analysis of his subsequent remarks about Iran's nuclear program, its treatment of academics, women, dissidents, Jews, and homosexuals, and his own questioning of the holocaust to the serious news outlets. What I'll note though is that Stephen Colbert's observation about the pacification of America held true. Nobody disrupted the speech, nobody protested inside the auditorium, nobody walked out en masse. Given the students' hostile reception to Jim Gilchrist, founder of the minutemen, you'd think they'd be ten times as incensed at Ahmadenijad's presence, but I believe that President Bollinger's excoriating intro may have defused some of that energy. Plus, the presence of dozens of U.S. secret service agents and the sheer curiosity factor of hearing what he had to say probably also kept protestors in check.

It was history in the making, and I'm glad I had a chance to witness it firsthand.