I agree that he's a whack job, but it seems like he was set up in an ambush. If he knew he was going to be in a debate in front of a unfriendly crowd, he might have reconsidered and at least not been surprised with the reaction he received. If I receive requests to speak, I generally assume a majority of the audience actually wants to hear what I have to say...

Did he receive a request to speak? Or was it he who made the request?

Perhaps he has misjudged our collegiate youth. Perhaps they are not the "useful idiots" he thought them to be...

Dracut,

I wouldn't expect ANY students to sit by and clap politely while someone dredged up old denialist cannards to say the holocaust never happened. It's amazing to me that he would expect that recaction in an academic setting.

Even Ann Coulter hasn't tried holocaust denial (yet). And she doesn't get a free pass on her hatefulness when she's invited to speak.

I don't think Ahmadinejad himself was attacked. It was his ideas that were derided and mocked. You shouldn't go to a university with worn out old and repeatedly discredited ideological rubbish and expect to be treated with kid gloves.

Mark,

It is easy to see why he would think that, though, with the "liberal media" falling all over themselves to tell everyone what limp-noodle mindless liberals the effete intellectual elite are.

The interview with him was quite surreal. The questions were basically just White House talking points, and his answers talked around the questions in a rather mealy-mouthed way rather than smacking them down. It was as though interviewer and interviewee were competing to see who could out-weasel the other.

I'm glad that he came. I think that it is important to hear "the enemy's" point of view, directly from said person. That way, we can know whether we hate him because we're told to or because of what he actually has to say.

I think that everyone has the right to say what they want to. However, this goes both ways. Ahmadinejad should be listened to by those attending his speech (attendees needn't clap when they disagree). Then he should be soundly rebutted when he says something that doesn't hold up to scrutiny or that encourages hate. That's the way that free speech and dialog work best, I think.

Karen,

One of the things I've observed about the ideas he promotes, however, is that they are extremely resistant to debate. Not because they are sound ideas, but because they are based on an outright opposition to logic, fact, and even reason.

Denialism is not debate. In fact, it is completely in opposition to debate...as the debates have already happened, and they are re-initializing debate without providing new information. They are merely re-arrainging their rhetoric.

Holocaust denial, global climate change denial, Evolution denial, etc. Are fundimentally antithetical to debate. It's one side sticking it's fingers in it's ears when it's explained to them that they are losing the "debate" over and over again, because they just keep the same arguments over and over (occasionally changing vocabulary, but not substance)...and then crying "foul" when the other side says they don't want to play anymore.

It is true that it is good that he was able to come where we could hear for ourselves the things he says and judge them...but unless he has some new knowledge or scholorship to bring to the issues, I don't think that "dabate" is a correct term for what would happen.

It just gives unearned legitamacy to the ideas. Let him come, let him speak, but don't pretend it's a debate, and don't force the students and faculty to show respect for something that isn't debate, but is instead simply a recitation of ideas and arguments that have already been thoroughly, repeatedly, and soundly discredited, add nothing new to the argument, and supply the foundation for a social doctrine that promotes the idea of racial warfare and genocide.