In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen

That's the motto for Columbia University, one of the most respected Ivy League schools in America, situated in one of the most progressive cities in the nation. It reads "In Thy light shall we see the light". And after the recent bullish political antics of the institution's president, couldn't be more of a joke.

I'm a bit behind the times these days, not paying much attention to the politics of life - with our move back to the States coming up in less than two weeks I'm preoccupied and honestly, I find the neverending soap opera that is the world political stage quite boring (for it's hopelessness) lately. But when I received numerous emails from friends and colleagues in New York about the uproar Ahmadinejad's visit to the East Coast had caused I dug further and found, among others, this LA Times article.

The news out of New York (ie: the American media) is that the Iranian president had the usual inflammatory, oddball things to say - most notably his statement that there are 'no homosexuals in Iran'. (While he personally may not know of any, they certainly exist. But in a country where these things are punishable in the most violent ways who on earth is going to flaunt it?) In any case, maybe I'm picking on the wrong character here, but it wasn't the self-fulfilling prophecy of whatever bizarre things Ahmadinejad had to say that upset me, but rather the equally bizarre behavior of Bollinger, the president of Columbia, who introduced Iran's leader to his student-body audience with a thirty minute speech chock full of blatant insults and sheer rudeness aimed directly at his guest. The introduction consisted of the words: 'astonishingly uneducated', 'belligerent', 'ridiculous' and 'preposterous'...

As the head of a highly respected educational institution Bollinger had a responsibility to choose his words carefully; he spoke for his faculty, he spoke for the students who pay through the nose to patronize his holier-than-thou college, and in some ways, as the host of this charade, he spoke for New York and America in general. So, what did this figurehead do with the very rare and precious opportunity for a civilian to speak directly with one of the most controversial political leaders of our time? How did he approach what could have been a true learning opportunity for not only his students, himself, but his guest and our nation as a whole? He took the stage for the sheer purpose of vomiting his personal opinions all over Ahmadinejad and then abandoned him to the audience's pitchfork questions.

I'm not saying Ahmadinejad should be handled with kid gloves; but a certain amount of respect and kudos should be afforded the man who stepped out of his own comfort zone in order to communicate directly with university students in our country. Ahmadinejad is a professor himself, teaching at Tehran University (where his own students sometimes protest in the streets outside) and as such, it would seem an especially meaningful allowance on his part to take the time to visit with Columbia. Whatever his own political agenda, whatever the state of human rights in his country - he made the effort; and gave us, the citizens, a chance to speak with him firsthand instead of hearing him through the thick filter of bureaucrats and media translations we're usually fed from. And what on earth did we learn about Iran or it's leader from this very public verbal stoning? As far as I can see, absolutely nothing; and all because Bollinger took it upon himself to devolve the summit into a personal sounding board. What did we learn about ourselves? Plenty, I hope...but I'm not holding my breath.

Ahmadinejad said a number of strange things after Bollinger handed him over to the crowd. But one thing he said that makes perfect sense, and we'd do well to learn from was, "In Iran, when we invite a guest, we show them respect."

After the event was over Bollinger touted himself as a 'speak[er] of truth to power', lauded our nation's freedoms of opinion and speech, and those freedoms truly are things to be celebrated - but his arrogant waste of an opportunity for real discourse is an absolute shame and makes a mockery of our nation and it's 'freedoms', ultimately further proving what the rest of the world already says about America behind it's back, that we are a nation of loud-mouthed bullies. That's the truth everyone else is speaking in nearly every country on the planet today, in light of this event.

If Bollinger had upheld the high standards of his Ivy League school, if he had taken the motto "In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen" to heart it quite possibly could have been the single most enlightening and future-forward movement to take place between Iran and America in the last thirty years. But no, instead, Columbia's face-man threw that very possibility straight into the trash. Not exactly what I would call 'seeing the light'.