Free speech

Speaking of higher education, this sign was held up amidst the protesters opposing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University today. Iran's President is in NYC to address the U.N., an international body whose mission is to work for peace and is committed to improving the lot of the world's poor by 2015. What's more, Ahmadinejad is the President and spokesman of a government whose greatest opposition has come, in recent years, from student protests. These protests were stopped by violence in 1999. What better way to push for openness and debate in Iran, for discussion and protest by students, than to lead by example?

Meanwhile, Stanford students are rightly up in arms over the conservative Hoover Institutes's appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting fellow. While Ahmadinejad is visiting for a couple of days, speaking at the UN and giving a speech to a major University, Rumsfeld is suddenly a part of the Stanford faculty. The Hoover Institute may be independently funded and therefore free to appoint whomever they want, but students and alumni need not be happy about it. The Stanford Daily has published some lovely sarcastic commentary.

(Update: A transcript of the President of Columbia's introductory, speech as well as the Q&A with Iran's President, is now available.)