Ahmadinejad at Columbia circa 2007

It began innocently enough. The Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA, formerly known as Model UN) announced to their members that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who gave a speech at Columbia in 2007), in town for the United Nations General Assembly, had invited them to a dinner on September 21st (the logistics of this invitation are unclear). Bwog has obtained a copy of the email sent to the CIRCA listerv. Here’s an excerpt:

II. DINNER WITH IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD
When: Wednesday, September 21
Time: 6:30 PM
Where: Midtown
Why: To learn about Iran from her president! Noting high demand for
this event, will be accepting names of interested CIRCA members on a
first-come-first-serve basis. We cannot guarantee spots. Please email
CIRCA Vice President of Academics, Tim Chan (timars.chan@gmail.com),
with your name, school, and class year. If you are a veteran CIRCA
member, please briefly list your involvements with the club.

Soon after, Spec wrote a story about the planned meeting, which did not make clear whether or not the meal was actually confirmed, or simply a possibility. Their article, like everything else relating to this situation, was not without controversy. The Spec article includes a quote from Tim Chan, CIRCA’s Vice-President of Academic Affairs. Rhonda Shafei, CIRCA’s president, tells Bwog that Chan tried to retract his comments before the story was published in the print edition of the paper (although the story had been published online for over a day), but Spec refused. Otherwise, CIRCA had no comment on the story.

Spec’s article brought the planned dinner to the attention of national media, including Fox News and The New York Post, who accused Columbia students of “dining with a madman” and being desperate for attention.
Read more…

Reuters reports that an Iranian court has sentenced Kian Tajbakhsh, a U.S.-Iranian scholar, to more than 12 years in prison due to alleged espionage and acts against national security.  Tajbakhsh was taken into custody in July after the disputed June election triggered mass chaos and civilian uprising in Iran.  As Reuters explains, “The verdict looked certain to anger the United States, which is seeking to engage the Islamic Republic in direct talks to resolve a long-running row over Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions.”

The scholarly community’s loss is also our loss, as Tajbakhsh intended to teach at Columbia this semester.  In September, PrezBo joined the U.S. Department of State in calling for his release.  PrezBo declared,  “We concur in urging his release from detention and express our heartfelt support for his family, friends, and colleagues who are anxious over his wellbeing.”

 Tajbakhsh graduated from Columbia in 1993 with a PhD in Urban Planning.  He taught at the New School from 1994 to 2001, and has long sought to bridge East and West in his scholarly work.  He has worked for many international organizations, such as the Social Science Research Council, the World Bank, the Open Society Institute and the Dutch Association of Municipalities, as well as for government bureaus within Iran.  He was previously imprisoned in 2007 on false charges of endangering national security, but was released after four months.

If this new-fangled Twitter thing is to be believed, there’s some big things a-poppin’ in Iran, and the world media has been calling up Columbia professors for their reactions. The man with the most screen time this time around has probably been Professor Gary Sick (at right), which is not surprising given that he was the “the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis.” That’s the kind of bullet point that gets attention, and Sick has been quoted all over the media, including the BBC, The Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and Politico. Plus, somewhat fittingly, you can follow him on his Tumblr account.

Other professors are getting in on the act as well, including Hamid Dabashi, Phillip Bobbit, and Richard Bulliet. The most creative commentary, though, has come from Ph.D. candidates Alexandra Scacco and Bernd Beber, who argued in Saturday’s Post that the election results were likely rigged because the numbers did not look random enough. Trust us, it makes sense.

In non-Iran news, one group of Columbia professors have discovered two brain systems used to accurately predict others’ emotions, and another group has found that the subway is 15 decibels quieter than it was three years ago. Also, Meghan McCain appears to have dedicated her post-election career to one proposition only: embarassing herself as much as possible. 

Apparently overjoyed with his previous New York sojourn, our overseas pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (we even remember how to spell that from the last go-around!) is returning to our fair city to attend the U.N.’s General Assembly in September.

According to Mahmoud himself, he’s coming around to “defend Iran’s rights” and remedy the “unjust” Western way of administrating international organizations.

Zahra Khimji and Bwog editor Maryam Parhizkar write about a very long cycling trip with a very noble mission.

While in the United States people are constantly striving for ways to save the environment and stop global warming, Iranians too are striving for ways to promote peace environmental awareness.  Somayeh Yousefi and Jafar Edrisi, an athletic couple who first met on a mountain peak near Tehran in 1998, are just such people — this year, the Iranian cyclists began their journey to promote peace and environmental conservation, one country at a time.

Professor Dennis Dalton, well-known in the last few months for taking part in the recent hunger strike, introduced the event. “This word, peace — that matters most to me,” Professor Dalton said, while physically pointing to the word on the large banner hung on the table in front of the room.  Dalton warmly welcomed the cyclists, stating that although we must work to resolve conflict that we had gotten into with Iran, “violence spreads like a cancer . . . we are plagued with that cancer now, and we must cure it.”

Yousefi and Edrisi then proceeded to explain their mission, which involves cycling around the world and creating a “green line” of newly planted trees along the way to promote peace and environmental awareness. “No one will be living in a peaceful world without the environment,” Yousefi, the English speaker of the two, said. Yousefi and Edrisi have been tracking every step of their trip and blogging whenever they have the chance. Starting from Iran, they have cycled through major parts of Europe such as Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and have crossed the Atlantic ocean (by flight, of course!). As of today, the couple has planted a total of 14 trees, with 2 in New York State.

Read more…

As if the fountains on Low Plaza didn’t provide enough innuendo for passersby, a fifty foot “rocket” suddenly materialized between them this morning. Who, you may ask, felt starved for such salacious symbolism? Why, the College Dems, Repubicans, and LionPAC, who teamed up to inflate what’s supposed to be, according to their press release, a “long nuclear bomb”, placed in order to raise awareness about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, and to advertise a Thursday evening panel on the subject. According to Bwog’s ever-vigilant staff, some of the organizers attempted to place the word “IRAN” on the missle itself, but had (for what reason, we’re not sure) to take it down.

Those interested in the panel should note it will take place at 7:30 PM Thursday in Hamilton 602. Columbia professor Paul Richards, Paul Bracken of Yale, and one Herbert London of the Hudson Institute will be present, along with perennial Bwog favorite Richard Bulliet. The massive missile will remain afront the steps until 2 this afternoon.

-CJS, Photo by Sara Vogel 

Over 300 have the balls to stand out in the cold; 150 participate in much warmer Lerner teach-in (also, Spec includes a nifty little video)

In the meantime, Computer Music Center staff catches colds without protesting

Chillin’ with the Varsity Show

Will Iran turn a cold shoulder?

– In the meantime, the pro-life perspective of feminism

Newsflash! Columbia was on Fox again today, for bringing the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations to speak. A little Bwog inside scoop: he almost went the way of his President, when the Law School withdrew their offer of space. Fortunately for Towards Reconciliation, the Muslim Student Association stepped up by donating pre-reserved space in Lerner, and the Columbia Musical Theater Society very menschily agreed to silence their rehearsal in Roone (in exchange for free pizza from SDA). Bwog editor Chris Szabla has this extensive report.

Jawad Zarif has spent considerable time in the US; a graduate of the University of Denver and San Francisco State, he arrived in New York in 1982 to obtain a doctorate from SIPA only to discover the school did not give out PhDs (he retrospectively claims it was Columbia that channeled him into diplomacy). His address began, then, with an observation regarding notions of Iran Zarif had encountered in this country. “Iran is a misunderstood country in the US,” he claimed. It is one with a long history, one that understands the fleeting nature of dominance. As such, it has been heavily influenced by the 200 years it experienced digesting foreign impositions — including those of Iraq, which, he noted, launched its 1980s invasion with substantial foreign encouragement. The perception this foreign influence engendered, Zarif continued, was that Iran could not trust others.

Nevertheless, this lack of trust never meant, he noted, that Iran had any need or desire to act aggressively toward its neighbors — it had no real needs outside its borders. In fact, Zarif asserted, never in 250 years had Iran really threatened or invaded another country, in contrast to Iraq’s wars against Iran and Kuwait. In fact, it has been active in stablizing the region, as the consequences of instability had only pejorative consequences for Iran — the millions of refugees it has had to accept from Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. Zarif noted that Iran had been active in stabilizing the government of Tajikistan, mediating the dispute between Armenia and Azerbijan, and helping create what he called an “acceptable government” for Afghanistan, and was the first country to recognize the new government in Iraq. Accusations that Iran was interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs, he claimed, were the inventions of Washington, and are contradicted by Iraqis on the  ground. Iran, he explained, naturally supports a government composed of the former opposition to Saddam Hussein, individuals it was the only government to support in earlier decades. Read more…

In which film savant Iggy Cortez recommends a melodrama with honesty.

Like many Iranian movies, Bahman Ghobadi’s beautiful and passionate A Time for Drunken Horses focuses its poignant narrative on children, a device some critics consider excessively manipulative, but which Ghobadi handles with honesty and an admirable restraint. The film follows a family of orphaned Kurdish siblings living in brutal conditions in the border between Iran and Iraq. Ayoub, the film’s young hero, and his sisters make back-breaking sacrifices to support each other and their disabled older brother, Madi.

Their already difficult lives take a turn for the worst when a doctor reveals that Madi is critically ill and needs an operation to survive. His siblings become determined to raise the money in whatever way they can – Ameneh, an elder sister, agrees to marry an Iraqi Kurd if they agree to pay for Madi’s operation (the groom’s family eventually refuses, offering them a donkey they can sell instead). But Ayoub’s dangerous struggles form the heart of the film, as he attempts to raise money transporting contraband goods with a group of ineffective smugglers. The film’s enigmatic title is also the film’s most absurd and potent image, referring to the smugglers’ practice of spiking their mules’ water with vodka, so they can endure journeys on freezing mine-infested fields and mountains.

Read more…

Always up for controversy, Bwog perked up this morning at a Spectator headline declaring that President Ahmadinejad of Iran had been invited to speak at Columbia. We soon e-mailed Public Affairs Director Robert Hornsby to see if he could save a seat for us, and minutes later recieved this response:

“Event was never scheduled. – Rob H.”

That confused us. Even more confusing is the recently posted Spectator web update, which tells of how SIPA administrators didn’t have time to check with World Leaders Forum staff before inviting the Iranian leader, and in fact de-invited him because they couldn’t mobilize enough security.

In the interim, a predictably indignant New York Sun article noted that the Columbia VP for Public Affairs denied last night that Ahmadinejad had been invited in the first place. And LionPAC posted signs all over campus inciting protest.

So, PrezBo. You could provide security at last year’s World Leaders Forum for the presidents of Iraq, Pakistan, and Venezuela (although Chavez bowed out), but not Iran? Why didn’t a normally media-savvy administration get its story straight?

And LionPAC, calm down. We survived when the Iranian foreign minister came a few years ago. Meanwhile, Bwog enjoyed this morning’s presentation by the entire government of Papua New Guinea…