A caricature at Columbia

Caricature by John Cox (coxandforkum.com)

I couldn't help but to take a long lunch on Monday to take in the speech and subsequent Q & A forum with the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at Columbia University in New York.

There was a great deal of popular chagrin directed toward Columbia University's president, Lee Bollinger (formerly the top brass at the University of Michigan), after he extended an invitation to the "terror of Tehran" to coincide with his trip to speak in front of the United Nations.

For those who defended the actions of Bollinger, the buzz phrase was "freedom of speech"; that somewhat fickle argument just doesn't do it for me--not now, not ever.

Simply put, there is nothing intrinsically good about exercising rights--this is a significant philosophical mistake. Ahmadinejad certainly had the right to speak, and Columbia had the right to invite him to their campus; but, that's not "what's great about America" as so many are prone to say.

What's great about American is that we have those rights. Try having an academic forum in Iran with President Bush or Ehud Olmert. Professors in Tehran don't even have the right to criticize their own leadership. And, those who have attempted to do so have been dealt with harshly (see the "new cultural revolution" that began after his 2005 election).

Disinviting the Iranian President would not have signified anything other than grace under fire (and, it is helpful to remember, something that they've done before). It was a mistake for Bollinger to bring the head of a rogue nation to his campus on a few fronts:

1.) Iran is a terrorist state

One would think that this alone would make him exempt from using one of our country's most presitigious universities as a platform for his tripe. Iran is funding what amounts to a proxy war against coalition (mostly American) forces in Iraq. Further, Iran funds one of the world's most notorious terror groups--Lebanon's Hezbollah.

This is to say nothing of Iran's ruthless domestic policies that repress Muslims and non-Muslims alike (read about people of the Baha'i faith and their treatment in Iran). Women are persecuted (imprisoned for not being covered from head-to-floor*), homosexuals (which Ahmadinejad claims do not exist in Iran--"I don't know who told you that they did...") are executed and there is no such thing as a free press (for a contemporary example of this fact, read about the speech in the state-run press in Iran and all the "standing ovations...")

Ahmadinejad is packing prisons full of dissidents in an apparent effort to reignite the "moral" fervor that brought about Iran's Islamic Revolution under the infamous Ayatollah Khomeini. So, we should not be surprised, then, to see hangings making a return to public life (and, in many cases, you don't even have to leave the living room to watch them). And not just hangings, but stonings that normally involve women being buried up to their necks and, in some cases, in the presence of their children.** This practice has, ostensibly, been in moratorium in Iran since 2002, but evidence suggests otherwise (see Amnesty International report).

2.) PR

In the eyes of the public, Columbia could scarcely look worse. He alienated nearly everyone with any connection to the school, especially the school's Jewish community. (A relationship that may be bruised forever after Bollinger confessed that he would have offered a similiar forum to Hilter in the 1930s. As if Ahmadinejad's own words about wiping Israel "off the map" weren't enough to cause some derision.)

In an effort to be seen as a strict cosmopolitan, the milquetoast academic made the mistake that will inevitably become his legacy as president of the university.

3.) Academic Integrity

To call the forum with Ahmadinejad an "academic" forum is a total misuse of the term. Bollinger played the role of chickenhawk as he kowtowed to the furious masses by taking cheap shots at his guest BEFORE he had even spoken a word. It looked like a desperate attempt by the president to score points with a disgusted populace.

Further, had Bollinger done any research into his guest's track record, he would have known that Ahmadinejad DOES NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS. Ahmadinejad's schtick hasn't been considered academic since Plato went about impersonating Socrates nearly 2400 years ago.

Bollinger, then, simply gave him a platform from which to speak his unenlightened rot.

Studying propaganda is academic; producing it is not.

Ahmadinejad, apparently, is a master of illusions as evidenced by the applause (much more than a smattering) he received from many of the 600 in attendance at Columbia. The fact that Ahmadinejad is a puppet of the mullahs and ayatollahs in his country doesn't make him any less dangerous. It is clear that he is making every attempt to build consensus in the world against the "arrogant powers"--the United States, Israel, Britain and, before long, Sarkozy's France.

And, thanks to some strange historical phenomenon, people are listening.

Ahmadinejad's appeal to the non-aligned countries of the world during his speech before the United Nations is every bit as scary as it is transparent. Iran is bloc-building, preying upon the empty-headed anti-American hysteria that exists in some parts of the world.

And, as is now clear after the Columbia debacle, we now live in one of those parts.

Keep churning out your allied lemmings, Lee. Their prestigious degrees will make for impressive sandwich boards one day.

*Indeed, even hospitals in Iran have been directed to refuse aid to women who do not meet the strict code of dress. (See "Islamic Republic of Fear", in the Economist (August 23, 2007)

**"Rules also specify the size of the stones which can be thrown so that death is painful and not imminent." (IPS News, September 29, 2006)

Defending the indefensible

It became clear to me this past week that race relations in this country are never more than a single incident away from falling to pieces.

To say that what happened in Jena, Louisiana, is a microcosm of the problem of racism is irresponsible.

It's not. It's just another case of misguided justice in the wildwood of rural America.

For those of you who know nothing of the saga that has unfolded in central Louisiana over the past year, here is the truncated version:

Jena, a small town of less than 5,000 people, is overwhelmingly white; and, like most cities in the Deep South, it has a sizeable minority of blacks that is, for lack of a better term, cordoned off in one part of town.

Late last year, when several black students at Jena High School decided they wanted to sit under a shade tree that was, ostensibly, for whites only (called the "white tree"), all hell broke loose in the town.

The following day, three whites students hung nooses from the tree and were subsequently compelled to serve in-school suspensions for a short period of time. (This, in spite of the fact that both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office felt the incident rose to the level of a hate crime.)

Months later, a white student was attacked in the schoolyard by six black students. The student was badly beaten, but did not spend the night in the hospital.

Five of the students, inexplicably, were charged with attempted second-degree murder. The sixth was charged as a juvenile.

One of the six, Mychal Bell, was also a juvenile at the time of the incident (he was 16) and was tried as an adult.

Bell, whose record wasn't clean to begin with, never stood a chance:

--He faced an all white jury drawn from an all white pool.

--His court-appointed attorney failed to call a single witness, believing that the prosecution hadn't proven its case. (Something that could not have been evident considering the unanimous verdict the jury returned.)

--He had to answer to a zealous prosecutor who, from the outside looking in, did not fulfill his duty without respect to persons.

The trumped up charges against Bell and the others were eventually reduced to aggravated second-degree battery--a charge that requires the use of a "deadly weapon." Since no deadly weapon was involved, the district attorney was successful in convincing the all-white and (apparently) all-clueless jury that the accused's tennis shoes were deadly weapons.

Bell was convicted of the crime that carried a maximum punishment of 22 years in prison. Soon after, the conviction was overturned by the the Louisiana Court of Appeals. (The district attorney in Lasalle Parish is set to appeal the Appeals Court decision.)

The charges against the other four (sans the minor) are unaffected by the decision in Bell's case, as they were all over 17 at the time and, according to Louisiana law, technically adults.

What has happened in Jena is tragic on three fronts.

--The charges against these six individuals were CLEARLY trumped up and race DID play a role in their treatment. The white students that precipitated this conflict got a slap on the wrist. (This was not the only incident in the town that year that involved preferential treatment for whites, however.)

--The district attorney failed to seek justice for the young man who was beaten. Instead, he sought retribution; the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

--The district attorney's apparent double standard in the issuance of charges for whites and blacks convicted of the same crime puts people like me in a position to defend six young men who do not deserve it. They made a huge mistake, and deserve to be punished. Unfortunately they are now considered victims--and for good reason.

Racism does exist in this country, and this will never change. What has to change, however, is the way we react in this country to incidents like the one in Jena.

If I didn't know any better, I would think that this one incident in this tiny town in Lousiana actually set race relations back to the mid 50s.

Again, it didn't.

During these moments people seem all too eager to run to a side, blindly defending the indefensible.

The Jena Six committed a crime.

The district attorney is Jena is probably a racist.

I'm not going to waste any time defending the actions of either.

ANTlanta

Rather than spending Labor Day weekend couped up in smalltown America, I decided to visit my sister, brother-in-law and niece in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After work on Friday, I pointed my car towards Atlanta where I would spend the night.

On the way, I stopped at Andersonville, GA, home of the notorious Andersonville Prison where thousands of Union Soldiers were imprisoned during the Civil War.

Andersonville possesses that duality that almost always exists in historic places. It is at-once breathtaking and burdensome, leaning on the knowledge of all the horrors the ground I was standing on once upheld.

After spending the better part of an hour circling the prison yard and adjacent cemetary, I hopped back on state road 49 en route to Interstate 75.

I arrived to my hotel on the southside of Atlanta (Jonesboro area, another notable Civil War era town(, dropped off my luggage and got something to eat just down the road at Sonny's.

After a good night's sleep, I checked out of my room at around nine and when I got out to my car I didn't know whether to flip or fall in it.

Ants.

There were ants all over the INSIDE of my car.

All over the console, the seats, the floor mats, the door panels...everywhere.

I immediately looked around to find some port of entry for these ants and, finding none, I started to search for some earthly reason why they would have any interest in my car. (Although, I have been told that only the lowest form of life would ever get into a Chrysler...)

And then I saw the open package of Sour Patch Kids in my seat.

I had found the culprit.

And so, I did my best to swallow my disgust for these nasty little creatures and proceeded out of the parking lot and across 75 to a gas station. I spent the next 30 minutes with a vacuum, an air hose and a can of bug spray. (Not raid, mind you, but the kind you apply to your skin.)

I got the majority of the ants out of the car, but I still had to battle the most ambitious arthopods all the way to Charlotte. I would say that it simply helped to pass the time, but I would be lying.

It was disgusting.

Once in Charlotte, I spent most of my time hanging out with my 4-month-old niece. I also mixed in a little shopping at Concord Mills. I'm not much of a shopper, but I needed a new pair of shoes.

My niece, Jaedyn, is a lot more active than she was the last time I saw her--only three weeks ago! She speaks a lot more gibberish and has already begun to dwarf other babies her age.

On Sunday night, I went to the Nascar Speedpark in Concord with my sister, her husband, and their neighbors, Jessica and Jonathan. After ravaging two of the park's go-cart tracks, we all played 18 holes of putt-putt--Jeff won.

I left early Monday morning to go back to south Georgia on a different route than the won that took me there. (Within reason, this is my longstanding policy for traveling by car.)

Instead of traveling through Atlanta, Greenville and Spartangburg, I drove through Columbia, Augusta and nearly 100 miles of the Georgian wildwood.

In total, it took me about six hours not including my hour-long jaunt around Augusta just to get a peek at Magnolia Drive.

I made it back in time to watch Phil Mickelson beat Tiger Woods in the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston.

All-in-all, not a bad way to spend a Labor Day weekend.