22 Comments
Dateless
In what will certainly be characterized by the media as caving to public pressure, the Columbia International Relations Council and Association, CIRCA, will be a no show at tomorrow’s dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is not clear as of yet whether or not CIRCA was disinvited from the event, or if they chose themselves to avoid further controversy. CIRCA President Rhonda Shafei, CC’12, only confirmed that CIRCA would not be participating, and that the tickets have been given to another student organization. She would not comment on which group this might be.
The dinner has been controversial since Spectator first broke the story that plans were in the works. The following day, the New York Post and Fox News published a distorted account of the planned events, which claimed that President Bollinger and the University in some way supported the event. Many others followed suit, resulting in one attempt to bring legal action against the university.
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22 Comments
@Anonymous I am really sad that CIRCA caved under public pressure and the arrogance of FOX news. As a member of the Columbia community I was really proud to say that I attend a school where open discussion and access to information is encouraged and a country where people are allowed to dine with whoever they want.
@Anonymous The actual reason is that Ahmadinejad canceled the dinner, after learning that the restaurant he made reservations at required a tie.
@Anonymous CIRCA did not cave to public pressure, as they never did anything wrong. Due to the fact that the media chose to focus solely on them, despite the fact that many other colleges and universities, NGOs and not to mention a group from SIPA was going, the Iranian Mission chose to withdraw the invitation. These tickets were redistributed to SIPA, so perhaps everyone should go chase them down.
@Anonymous Why on Earth would you want to legitimize a man who is know to oppress his own people and is known to fund terrorists who KILL AMERICAN TROOPS by having dinner with him? Would you have had dinner with Osama bin Laden before we (legally and righteously) put a bullet between his eyes?
@um I believe Americans did at one point have dinner with Osama bin Laden.
@HollA oh yeah and that was totally a good idea which is also totally a great justification for wanting to have dinner with this guy who brutally oppresses his own people…
@iran>iraq About time. I said a wk and a half ago- the only effect of such a dinner would be a legitimation to some extent of iran’s regime in the West. While bollinger turned it upside down in 07, circa wouldve just either blown it into a full-blown argument w him or just let him push his shit through.
@Not gonna lie I’m a little upset because I had a really nice outfit picked out and was looking forward to free food.
But seriously, what was going to be the harm. We go, we shmooze with other liberal yuppie college kids and maybe listen to a talk about how, well I don’t know what he was gonna talk about but it wouldn’t have been anything groundbreaking. He’s not going to say anything wild while in a hotel in new york and we’re not going to say anything inflamatory because we don’t want to die.
@I could think of many different types of harm that could come of this event, the greatest harm being to your own personal reputation.
@i mean i kind of thought the same thing, and then i was like, actually, if something horrible ever does actually happen, it’s probably 100 x more likely at an incidental dinner with an evil dictator. you know?
@Anonymous are you retarded or what? you ACTUALLY think a head of state would do something ‘horrible’ to a columbia student in new york city?
the level of delusion and fear-mongering all over the comments is mind-blowing. i can see how easy it was for bush to invade iraq, given how dumb people are.
@No... I’m not retarded. But thanks for caring.
@Just a matter of time til some lib starts complaining about the 1st amendment and a person’s right to express themself.
@Anonymous given that you probably hold an additional israel passport, it is unlikely u believe in the 1st amendment. how about u get out of my country and return my tax dollars?
@Anonymous2 Hey Anonymous! Stop being such a discriminatory prick making far reaching assumptions and assigning an entire country to a singular opinion! Oh wait, I forgot! You are arrogant enough to believe that an entire country/nationality would even hold a singular opinion! To think that a fellow student of mine would be so ignorant. Sigh…
@Because Jews are the only ones that hate this man?
@Anonymous yup.
@Anonymous I guess Ahmadinejad will just have to sit alone at one of those awkward two-person tables in John Jay and pretend to be engrossed in his smart phone in order to avoid making eye-contact. Awkward.
@CC'13 *hawkward
@Anonymous There have always been other students going and professors and other schools. Columbia was never going to host or pay for anything. Poor fact checking and sensational headlines along with a few bad PR moves from CIRCA are what led to media shit storm and subsequent cancellation.
@Anonymous the jews won again!
@Anonymous They gave the tickets to the Marching Band.