For colleges, selecting speakers is tough call

Is a college campus a place for all views to be aired, or are some public figures too extreme to deserve the platform?

It's a question numerous colleges have wrestled with, but perhaps none more frequently of late than Columbia University in New York. The topic is front-and-center again over the invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there Monday.

President Lee Bollinger has resisted calls to cancel the event, but promised to introduce the talk himself with a series of tough questions on topics including Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust, his call for the destruction of the state of Israel and his government's alleged support of terrorism.

The university "is committed to confronting ideas -- to understand the world as it is and as it might be," Bollinger said in a statement, emphasizing the invitation implied no endorsement of Ahmadinejad's opinions.

But Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said giving Ahmadinejad a platform is a betrayal of the persecuted scholars and students in Iran who do not enjoy academic freedom.

"There has to be some standard about who we give credibility to, who we give access to such a prestigious platform as Columbia University," he said. "What is the message that is sent to the students in his country that have suffered under him?"

At Columbia, the debates over both the Middle East and free speech have been especially hot, and Bollinger has faced criticism from all sides. By asking the tough questions he may be hoping to imitate then-vice president Richard Nixon, who in a 1959 Moscow visit boosted his standing by lecturing Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the famous "kitchen debate."

Colleges should support speakers who, like at Columbia, were legitimately invited by faculty and students, said Robert O'Neil, a former president of the universities of Wisconsin and Virginia and a leading scholar on campus free speech. But there is no obligation to provide a platform for just anyone who demands one.

Free-speech advocates say the chance to call public attention to Ahmadinejad's views is one of the best arguments for allowing him to speak. Protests are planned at Columbia's campus and the U.N.

"I'd be very surprised if the Columbia community did not as a result of Mr. Ahmadinejad's appearance on Monday learn a great deal more about what's wrong with contemporary Iran than they would have ever learned if President Ahmadinejad had been turned away," O'Neil said. "If you suppress a viewpoint by disallowing or barring a controversial speaker you make the speaker a martyr."