Cut president of Iran and make more space
“In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful …”
These are the words ““ later contradicted ““ with which Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened his remarks on his recent visit to Columbia University.
Sepehr Vakil suggests that this “man of reason with a calm and collected voice” was unjustly ridiculed (“Ridicule of Iranian leader unjust,” Viewpoint, Oct. 1).
Indeed, Vakil notes, Ahmadinejad’s identification of the massacre of Jews during the Holocaust as a myth was made “in the spirit of scholarly inquisition.”
The Iranian president’s intellectual prowess was further elucidated in his response to a question on sexual preference and women: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country. … In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon.”
Vakil would do well to appreciate the criticism elicited by Ahmadinejad’s defensive oration, for in Tehran, such comments would have never made it to print.
I strongly support the efforts of this paper to provide alternative viewpoints when the commentary is insightful and reasonable.
In this particular case, the Daily Bruin should have made use of the space by placing a pretty picture of campus.
Mark D. Sugi
Graduate student,
David Geffen School of Medicine