Tolerance for some at Columbia

Dinesh D'Souza:

President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University is a very open-minded guy, in his own opinion. In inviting the Iranian prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, he issued this statement. "Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas...Necessarily on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs that many, most of even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialog and reason."

So why won't Bollinger allow the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) to recruit on the Columbia campus? ROTC was expelled from Columbia in the late sixties. In 2003 a majority of students said they wanted ROTC back, to give students the choice to serve their country in this way. The Columbia faculty opposed the measure, however, and Bollinger sided with them against the students.

What is the problem with ROTC as far as Columbia University is concerned? Apparently Bollinger and other left-wingers on the faculty can't stand the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning homosexuals. Yet this policy, devised and introduced by the Clinton administration, respects the privacy of homosexual soldiers on the condition that they aren't open or flagrant about being gay. The objective of the policy is to maintain morale in the barracks.

Even if you disagree with the military, Bollinger himself says that Columbia is open to allowing ideas that are "offensive and even odious." This is the whole point of tolerance. Tolerance means, “I disagree strongly, but I will put up with you.” If I agreed with what you have to say then there is no question of tolerance. Whatever Bollinger’s ideological disagreement with ROTC, surely students are capable of hearing his concerns and then making up their own minds about whether to enroll.

Meanwhile, Iran's policies toward homosexuals are--shall we say--somewhat more stringent than those of the U.S. military. I visited the website of Human Rights Watch where the country's sorry record is pretty well laid out. A few months ago, to take a random example, the Iranian police raided a home where men were allegedly dressed up as women. The men were accused of homosexuality, detained without a lawyer, and beaten. Perhaps they should consider themselves lucky: in the past Iran has not hesitated to execute homosexuals. Last November two men were strung up in northern Iran for engaging in homosexual acts. (Lesbianism is apparently punished not by death but by public whipping.)

...

It is easy for liberals to be hypocrites. It comes natural, because they are eager to see our enemy's point of view. If Iran hates the US it has something in common with the faculty of Columbia which hates the US policy on gays in the military. That is a point of view they have already heard and rejected. They have also heard Iran's point of view, but think there must be some merit to it because Iran hates George Bush as much as they do. You would think that would give them pause, but for Columbia, Austin, Texas's Oat Willy said it best--"Onward through the fog." I think his fog came from marijuana smoke, but I don't know what Columbia's excuse is.