T. Marlow Davis

n academia, controversial and challenging points of view are constantly subjected to spirited debate. It is in this spirit that Columbia offers each fall its World Leaders Forum, a series of conferences led by political and academic leaders from around the world. But there is more than meets the eye in this three-year-old Columbia tradition. With programs like the World Leaders Forum, Columbia is seeking to enlarge its role on the international scene—to become a global university. The World Leaders Forum provides insight into how the University envisions itself. Lisa Anderson, outgoing Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, presents the endeavor in almost evangelical terms, describing the World Leaders Forum as one means by which “Columbia is intimately involved in fostering peace and prosperity around the world.”

But Columbia has not yet fully sorted out the implications of its new role as part of the intellectual vanguard of the global community. The strange circumstances surrounding Dean Anderson's recent invitation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the World Leaders Forum tellingly illustrates the difficulties Columbia faces in negotiating its new role, injecting itself into the most important debates of the day, while trying at the same time to maintain its own standards of academic integrity.

Ahmadinejad, who was in New York at the time to speak at the United Nations, readily accepted Dean Anderson's invitation, SIPA Director of Communications Robert Garris told the Columbia Spectator. Ahmadinejad had never spoken on the campus of an American university before. The invitation was promptly withdrawn the next day, as Dean Anderson's office cited the logistical impossibility of securing the campus in time for the Iranian president's visit. Yet this came on the heels of an emphatic statement from President Lee Bollinger that for Ahmadinejad to speak would not “reflect the academic values that are the hallmark of a University event such as our World Leaders Forum.”

Which, of course, begs the question: what, exactly, are the values of the World Leaders Forum?

According to Bollinger, the World Leaders Forum is “a yearlong series of events where governmental and civic leaders, renowned intellectuals and cultural icons from many nations join with Columbia faculty and students to discuss a wide range of global issues, including sustainable economic growth and fair trade, global warming, nonviolent conflict resolution, human rights, artistic diversity, gender and racial equality, and multilateralism.” Broad in its scope of potential speakers and topics, the open-ended mission of the World Leaders Forum allows the University to shape the program on the fly—a flexibility essential if the University is to stay at the helm of global trends. Moreover, the University seems to see this forum as a targeted initiative aimed at producing specific, conclusive results. True to the spirit of academic discourse, speakers are free to explore and ruminate on a range of subjects without any constraints.

Ultimately, this is supposed to benefit not only Columbia, but the world at large, “to broaden global understanding.” Part of what it means to be a global university is to be a global marketplace of ideas. As Columbia takes on a new role, its time-tested belief endures: open discourse alone can produce a “meaningful contribution” to the world outside the ivory tower.

Nonetheless, the program is guided by no other distinct “academic values” that could possibly justify the exclusion of a world leader such as Ahmadinejad, who undoubtedly holds a position of global significance. Bollinger claimed to find Ahmadinejad's views “repugnant,” and clearly, Ahmadinejad has expressed inflammatory anti-Semitic views, but censoring speech on the basis of personal distaste betrays the essential value of free expression. It is the responsibility of any institution that boasts about its tradition of open discourse not to prevent from speaking those with whom it disagrees. Bollinger requires his own class to learn Justice Holmes's concept of the “market” of ideas in Abrams v. United States. Holmes wrote, “The best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. ...That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” This intellectual tradition must be upheld if Columbia wishes to be the forum for international discourse that Bollinger envisions.