这两天的哥大颇不宁静。伊朗总统内贾德要过来，哥大一下子成了风暴中心。内贾德来纽约参加联合国大会，本来想到世贸大厦遗址去参观一下，遭到了米国的断然拒绝，但是哥大还是继续伸出“橄榄枝”，邀请内同学来哥大做一个演讲，并回答同学们的提问。国内的报道有说哥大迫于压力取消内的演讲，其实是哥大顶着压力坚持请内过来。
哥大校长Lee Bollinger在19日的声明中讲“further Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues.”同时也承诺会就否认大屠杀、毁灭以色列、恐怖主义、核问题、妇女权益、同性恋等“sharp challenges”，这点后来证明校长先生没有食言，也没有让媒体失望。而再次强调“invoke a major theme in the development of freedom of speech as a central value in our society”。不过这个承诺的代价大概也会很大吧。
国际和公共事务学院院长 Coatsworth stated “Opportunities to hear, challenge, and learn from controversial speakers of different views are central to the education and training of students for citizenship in a shrinking and still dangerous world. This is especially true for SIPA students, many of whose careers will require them to confront human rights and security issues throughout the globe.”
而公共安全部门则早早贴出通知，一是要凭证件入校；二是关闭一些校门；第三点比较有趣，大意是会有很多人过来集会游行，学校准备了大音箱，是为了鼓励大家说话也让内同学说话，所以其他的同学就请忍着点(ask for your patience)。24日上午收到校长办公室给师生们的信，标题为：“Thoughts on Today's Forum”。哥大对于学术自由信念的秉承和坚持，对持不同政见、意见者的宽容和尊重，以及对于学生理性表达的鼓励和保护，很让人感慨。
Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:
I would like to share a few thoughts about today’s appearance of President Ahmadinejad at our World Leaders Forum. I know this is a matter of deep concern for many in our University community and beyond. I want to say first and foremost how proud I am of Columbia, especially our students, as we discuss, debate and plan for this highly visible event.
I ask that each of us make special efforts to respect the different views people have about the event and to recognize the different ways it affects members of our community. For many reasons, this will demand the best of each of us to live up to the best of Columbia's traditions.
For the School of International and Public Affairs, which developed the idea for this forum as the commencement to a year-long examination of 30 years of the Islamic Republic in Iran, this is an important educational experience for training future leaders toconfront the world as it is -- a world that includes far too manybrutal, anti-democratic and repressive regimes. For the rest of us, this occasion is not only about the speaker but quite centrally about us -- about who we are as a nation and what universities can be in our society.
I would like just to repeat what I have said earlier: It is vitally important for a university to protect the right of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.
But it should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas wedeplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a criticalpremise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices.
The great majority of student leaders with whom I met last week affirmed their belief that this event, however controversial, is consistent with the values of academic freedom we share at the center of university life. I fully support, indeed I celebrate, the right to peacefully demonstrate and engage in a dialogue about thisevent and this speaker, as I understand a wide coalition of ourstudent groups are planning for today. That such a forum and suchpublic criticism of President Ahmadinejad’s statements and policies could not safely take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. The kind of freedom that will be on display at Columbia has always been and remains today our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is the power and example of Americaat its best.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger
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