NEW YORK — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial appearance at Columbia University on Monday began with harsh, combative words from the university president — who introduced the hardline leader to a packed auditorium as “a petty and cruel dictator” with “a fanatical mindset.”
“Today, I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for,” Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said in a stinging rebuke of Ahmadinejad that also defended the university’s decision to invite him to speak. “We do not honor the dishonorable when we open our forums to their voices.”
Ahmadinejad, in New York to speak to the United Nations, retorted that Bollinger’s opening was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here.”
Ahmadinejad drew audience applause at times, such as when he bemoaned the plight of the Palestinians. But the former engineering professor, appearing shaken and irate over his host’s introduction, soon found himself drawn into the rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.
He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by saying: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country … I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”
Asked by an audience member if Iran sought the destruction of Israel, he did not answer directly.
“We are friends of all the nations,” he said. “We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security.”
He also said Palestinians must determine their own future.
Ahmadinejad’s past statements about the Holocaust also have raised hackles in the West, and were soundly attacked by Bollinger.
“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. “Will you cease this outrage?”
In his speech, before he took audience questions, Ahmadinejad said that further study of the Holocaust was necessary as an academic pursuit, and suggested that he had never denied its existence.
“I’m not saying it (the Holocaust) didn’t happen at all,” he said. “I said, ‘The Holocaust, granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?’ “
But Ahmadinejad went on to say that he was defending the rights of European academics imprisoned for “questioning certain aspects” of the Holocaust, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the genocide.
Asked about his country’s nuclear intentions, Ahmadinejad insisted the program is peaceful, legal and entirely within Iran’s rights, despite attempts by “monopolistic,” “selfish” powers to derail it. “How come is it that you have that right, and we can’t have it?” he added.
The appearance by Ahmadinejad, along with his request to visit ground zero, drew hundreds of protesters to the Columbia campus and to the United Nations, where the Iranian leader is scheduled to speak to the General Assembly today. New York City police denied Ahmadinejad’s ground zero request, citing security concerns.
Ahmadinejad told the university audience that he wanted to express sympathy for the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Then he appeared to question whether al-Qaida was responsible, saying more research was needed.
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