Seat at the Table

Columbia is now learning the price of losing trust.  

Columbia claims having the President of Iran speak is really a good opportunity for knowledgeable Americans (their students) to question Ahmadinejad directly about his Israel policies, nuclear ambitions and other Iranian policies that make Americans look at Iran with great suspicion.  Frankly, many Americans would probably love to hear the President Iran to be questioned directly.  However, the current sentiment seems to be that they don’t give Columbia the benefit of the doubt when Columbia says it will be an open forum designed to question Ahmadinejad.

So why does everyone treat Columbia like they are providing a friendly forum for Ahmadinejad instead of an open, question forum like Columbia claims?

The two Technorati charts to the right provide one clue.  There was already discussion about Columbia being anti-Israel, now that discussion climbs up as people talk about Columbia inviting Ahmadinejad.

Columbia long ago lost trust on the topic of being a fair and impartial forum for discussions related to Israel (which  Ahmadinejad talks about wiping off the map) and the Middle East.  When they were accused of having an anti-Israel bias in their Middle Eastern studies department, they missed an opportunity to make a strong stand to make it clear they were a place of impartial, scholarly study.  Instead, they had their own faculty committee clear scholars of being anti-Israel.  This came off looking like they were afraid of an external, objective investigation.

So now Columbia pays the price of failing to earn trust and be seen as a place of scholarly (read: objective) study.  Now, when people are forced to judge Columbia as an objective forum for Eastern studies, they get either the wrong benefit of the doubt…or, at best, none at all.