The New York Daily News reports:
A Columbia University dean said yesterday the Ivy League school would gladly welcome mass murderer Adolf Hitler to speak on campus. “If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him,” John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, told Fox News yesterday.
Coatsworth spoke two days before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slated to give a lecture on campus.
The dean wasn’t merely speaking hypothetically. Columbia, which has a history of providing a forum to provocative speakers, once welcomed one of Hitler’s cronies to the campus. Then-President Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany’s U.S. ambassador, Hans Luther, to speak at Columbia in December 1933, triggering a student revolt. Butler then fanned the fury by throwing a cocktail reception for Luther. [DRS HT: LGF]
Many people don’t know that after his service as supreme allied commander in World War II, but before his election as president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower served as president of Columbia University. Historian Travis Jacobs writes in his book Eisenhower at Columbia:
“To Columbia….Eisenhower brought his charisma, confidence, and proven leadership ability….his enormous energy and his ambition, as well as his commitment to ‘democratic citizenship’ and strengthening institutions to serve American values, infused his activities at Columbia.â€
From a review of Jacobs’ book: “The one area in which Eisenhower exerted any leadership was to promote the teaching of American citizenship as a premier goal of the university. This view was opposed by the faculty who believed, as one professor commented, they ‘were not there to propagandize the American way of life.’”
Apparently some characteristics of the faculty haven’t changed…
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I am always amazed that some people seem to think the right to speak freely means one must give those we disagree with access to any platform they wish from which to speak. Just because you may think Ahmadinejad or 9/11 Conspiracy theorists have the right to say stupid things does not mean you have to go out of your way to lend them credibility or an audience.