Just Say ‘No’ to Ahmadinedinner
Anyone accepting Columbia International Relations Council and Association’s invitation to sit down for an intimate dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next week should take a look at a photo taken at a public square in Iran, and distributed by the Associated Press on July 23, 2005. The image depicts two blindfolded boys, around 16 years of age, with nooses being affixed to their necks moments before they were publicly hanged by Ahmadinejad’s regime because they were accused of “raping boys,” or, as we call it, being gay.
I recall this photo not because it shocks–though it does–or because it will tell you anything new about the man who approved those hangings–it won’t. I bring it up because the moral burden of our Columbia University education and human dignity require us to examine whether it is right for us to sit down to dinner with a man who facilitates, even encourages, such executions.