Yesterday and today, the news has been full of references to Ahmedinejad's visit at Columbia University. I have trouble understanding why people felt the need to protest the fact that he had been invited to speak. Before reading accounts of his visit, I privately cheered on Columbia for being willing to host him. I heard a lot about Columbia as a champion of free speech.

This morning, then, I read what actually happened. To the cheering and chortling (as the NY Times put it) of the audience, the President of Columbia introduced the President of Iran by saying, "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

Uhhh, pardon? Exactly how is Columbia encouraging free speech? Through brazen inhospitality? Hospitality to guests, even guests who are enemies, forms a fundamental pillar of Eastern society. I would be willing to accept that this incident formed yet another classic example of cultural misunderstanding, except for that I hope that even the bluntest Americans would find such an introduction tactless, at best.

Ahmedinejad began his address by saying, "In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don't think it's necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty." You have to admire the man for his ability to think quickly, if nothing else.

What I find fascinating, though, are the parallels between the way the Columbia President treated Ahmedinejad and the way the church is often accused of treating "sinners." Finding no warm welcome in the church is a complaint I've heard too many times. In the end, for all our discussions of all our freedoms, we're all afraid of those we view as threats to a community's core ideals. Beating down Ahmedinejad before he stands up only makes us seem frightened of his power. If we're quite sure that the Holocaust took place, and we have the evidence to show that it did, surely hearing what Ahmedinejad has to say will only strengthen our position.

I'm reminded of John Stuart Mill's argument in On Liberty, regarding majority and minority opinions, and what happens when the majority stifles a minority voice: "If the (minority) opinion is right, the majority are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

More of Mill's voice of wisdom:

In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.