Olmert faces tough crowd

Olmert faces tough crowd

When President Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke to students at Columbia University in September 2007, the students, the faculty and the media were all given front row seats to condemn and to vilify.

Even the President of the University, Lee Bollinger, took the opportunty to get a dig in, telling Ahmadinejad:

"“Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator”

The New York Times reported:

"Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack."

The entire event generated reams of press coverage.

Contrast this with the experience faced by Ehud Olmert when he spoke to students at Chicago University this week.

In a letter to students, the university expressly forbade any video or audio recording equipment, barred members of the media from attending, told students they needed to be there 2 hours before the speech for security screening, and stipulated that questions should be pre-submitted, presumably also for screening.

The university ended the letter with the somewhat ironic comment::

"we appreciate your co-operation with our efforts to to ensure open discourse and freedom of expression."

Despite these efforts, a small group of students did protest, inside and outside the lecture hall, condeming Olmert's decision to attack Gaza and demanding that he respond to the Goldstone report.

But where critics of Ahmadinejad had been encouraged - and given every opportunity - to attack, critics of Olmert were ushered from the hall.

The New York Times and the mainstream US media didn't see fit to cover the event.

However, the Electronic Intifada did, and even managed to sneak in a camera: