Beirut -- NEW YORK: The whirr of a patrol helicopter circling above, thousands threaded their way past police barricades around Columbia University on Monday to listen, to praise, or to damn Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the prestigious American university that dared to invite him.
Columbia University announced last week, to applause and condemnation, that Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak at the school's annual World Leaders Forum.
The move ignited fierce debate in the press and around the city. The front page of the local Daily News claimed the invitation was tantamount to providing an "access of evil."
"In a university environment we must allow people to speak their minds, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all," Ahmadinejad said through a translator at the start of his speech.
Prior to his talk, a wave of protest united groups as politically divergent as the College Republicans and the Queer Alliance in demonstrations against Ahmadinejad's appearance.
Protesters carried signs that read: "Hitler Lives" and "Don't let Iran get the bomb."
Others aimed their ire at the university itself, chanting "shame on Columbia," from just outside the university's gate.
A man nearby, however, waved a placard showcasing his support for the university's decision. "Long live the power of debate," it read. "Negotiation, not bombs."
Those with student identification cards made it past guards at the gate, funneling into the packed auditorium and filling the adjacent lawn where hundreds watched a live broadcast of the event on a large screen.
Columbia president Lee Bollinger, who had faced criticism for inviting Ahmadinejad and promised to challenge him on a number of issues, began by defending the invitation as a commitment to free speech. He continued by enumerating his concerns over alleged human-rights violations in Iran.
"We at this university have not been shy to protest the challenge and failures of our own government to live by our values and we won't be shy about criticizing yours," said Bollinger. "Let's then be clear at the beginning. Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and a cruel dictator."
Bollinger went on to criticize Iran for its censorship of the press, and policies that discriminate against women, homosexuals and members of the Bahai faith. He also condemned Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust and Iran's alleged support for armed groups like Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Bollinger highlighted the imprisonment - and recent release - of several Iranian-American scholars, including Kian Tajbaksh, a Columbia alumnus, whom Bollinger said was still under house arrest.
"The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian-Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today's speaker to even appear on this campus," Bollinger said.
He then offered Tajbaksh a position teaching at Columbia and called on Ahmadinejad to assure his freedom and to return Columbia's favor by inviting Bollinger and others from the school to speak about free speech at Iran's universities.
Iran announced the liberation of the last Iranian-American detained on suspicion of harming national security Tuesday but the announcement of Ali Shakeri's release seemed to have little to do with Bollinger's request and was seen more as a show of good grace preceding Ahmadinejad's speech to world leaders at the UN Tuesday afternoon.
Bollinger concluded by saying he doubted the Iranian leader would have the "intellectual courage" to answer the questions he had raised.
In his own introductory remarks, Ahmadinejad hewed to an evasive political rhetoric, which he later revived in response to questions submitted by students despite the moderator's repeated appeals to answer the questions.
Ahmadinejad began by reciting verses from the Koran and then criticized Bollinger's attempts to "provide vaccination" to the Columbia audience before he spoke.
The president's subsequent oratory, which seemed aimed at audiences in Iran, meandered between the divine and material worlds, hinting subtly at the political backdrop against which Iran is pursuing its nuclear ambitions.
"Science is the light and scientists must be pure and pious," Ahmadinejad said. He reiterated later that his insistence on developing nuclear technology was strictly for use as an energy source and called the pursuit of nuclear and chemical weapons "another result of the misuse of science and research by the big powers" that wanted to hold a "monopoly" on science.
Ahmadinejad alluded to the lingering effects of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as to the use of depleted uranium in warheads, in a thinly veiled jab at the United States' own policies.
He avoided pointed questions regarding his past denials of Israel's right to exist and of the Holocaust - "the most documented event in human history," as Bollinger called it - by focusing instead on the "old wound" of the Palestinian displacement.
Ahmadinejad also asserted Iran's right to determine its own policies regarding its energy needs.
"We want to have the right to self-determination toward our future. We want to be independent. Don't interfere with us," he said.
When the speeches and questions were over, the crowds milled about in debate or dispersed to take the arguments elsewhere.
Plastered to the wall of the school's library, the propaganda of various student groups remained come Tuesday.
Iranian university chancellors said the harsh words of Bollinger's introduction only added to their perception of the United States as a bully.
The chancellors of seven Iranian universities issued a letter Tuesday to Bollinger saying his statements were "deeply shameful" and invited him to come to Iran.
In the letter, they asked him to provide responses to 10 questions, including, "Why did the US support the bloodthirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran?"
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