I could not disagree with you more Ryan. This man is not just some lunatic that Columbia picked off of a street corner in New York City. He is the President of Iran, the dominant Islamic country in the Middle East. His ideas may sound absurd, but it is in our best interests to try and understand him and the country he represents. To pretend that he does not exist, or that Iran should be ignored, well, to do so puts us at peril. Frankly, it was a very good idea to allow the Islamic scholars at Columbia to see this man up close and personal. If you read the comments by the President of Columbia, it is quite obvious that his ideas were not being given credence.
Frankly, I wish that Hitler had spoken at Columbia in 1936. We would have understood Hitler and the Nazi regime better, if Hitler had come to the United States to explain his ideas of racial purity. And then, perhaps, the United States would not have stood on the sidelines for so long in World War II, and waited until the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor to enter the war. If we had entered the war earlier, then perhaps Germany would have been defeated sooner, and much of the Holocaust could have been avoided.
Knowledge is power, Ryan. I applaud Columbia.