According to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "we don't have homosexuals like in your country … In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you we have it." This has become the most infamous portion of his infamous speech at Columbia University last Monday.
A cynical explanation of Ahmadinejad's statement that Iran does not have gays "like" those in the United States is that Iran's friends of Dorothy don't wear Diesel jeans, listen to Christina Aguilera or drink Cosmopolitans. But I doubt that's what the Iranian president meant.
Rather, he claims that homosexuality itself does not exist in Iran, and, presumably, the rest of the Muslim world. This is obviously preposterous (homosexuality is a part of human nature and has existed in most, if not all, cultures throughout history) but the purported absence of Iranian homosexuals is certainly not for Ahmadinejad's lack of trying. His regime has presided over the widespread arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals; according to Iranian human rights groups, the Iranian government has murdered as many as 4,000 gays since the Islamic Revolution came to power in 1979.
The Columbia student body applauded Ahmadinejad throughout his rant, a display that should go down as one of the most shameful moments in the annals of American academia. To their credit, however, the audience laughed in Ahmadinejad's face when he uttered his assertion about gays. But Columbia's invitation to Ahmadinejad (who kills gays) and its near four-decades-long banning of the military (which merely prohibits them from serving openly) is no laughing matter.
In 1969, Columbia University expelled the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program from its campus in response to the demands of a faculty and student body radicalized by the Vietnam War. Today, the University maintains its opposition ROTC (as well as the Judge Advocate General Corps at its law school) based on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which prevents openly gay people from serving in the armed services. Columbia and other elite schools claim that allowing the military to recruit on campus would violate their non-discrimination policies.
While it is difficult to persuade supporters of this policy on patriotic grounds (for instance, that having a strong military is more important than sending a feel-good, yet ultimately futile, message about homophobia), the most effective argument in favor of bringing the military back to campus is that banning it actually hinders the cause of ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
The policy can only be changed by Congress (it was an act of Congress in the first place) and Congress will only change the policy once the military supports its repeal. The easiest way to change the attitude of the military is to staff its ranks with fair-minded people the likes of which are more likely to be found at a place like Columbia than amongst the rural Southerners who overwhelm the military ranks. As I wrote in these pages two years ago, "The military brass itself is far more likely to empathize with someone who once wore a uniform and risked their life than they are to heed the hectoring of a liberal faculty member."
The least that can be said in Columbia's defense is that its opposition to ROTC and JAG is a good-faith effort to oppose homophobic policies. If that's the case, then how can those supporting the school's position on ROTC and JAG possibly justify President Lee Bollinger's invitation to Iranian President Ahmadinejad?
The Iranian regime's crimes against homosexuals are long and documented. Homosexuality is punishable by death, though some Iranian gays have escaped with mere lashes.
How dare this vicious thug come to our country and deny the existence of the thousands of gay people his regime has murdered. And how dare the students in the audience, who - had this been 1939 and it were Adolf Hitler speaking (as the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth says he would have liked), would have fecklessly applauded the Fuhrer - cheered and clapped for this murderer.
If gay people are not angry at the spectacle that transpired on Morningside Heights last week, then they are not paying attention. It is disingenuous for Columbia to claim that it bans the military from campus in deference to the aggrieved dignity of gay people while simultaneously inviting a murderer of homosexuals. This is the farce that Columbia University has now become: a place where those wanting to serve their country are shunned while a man who murders gays is welcomed and applauded.