As a response to Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University, Iran's Ferdowsi University has asked President Bush to speak. Unfortunately, the invitation was declined due to various reasons, mostly having to do with freedom of expression and condemnations of Iran's foreign policy. While having seen America's reaction and rebuttals to President Ahmadinejad last week, it would have been interesting to see Ferdowsi College's reaction to Bush's statements.
Here is a link to the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7024692.stm
Do you think President Bush should have accepted this invitation? Why?
What do you think Ferdowsi University's reactions would have been?
What was Ferdowsi University's motivation for inviting President Bush to speak?
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3 comments:
i think it was fine that president bush didn't accept the invitation, just as ahmadinejad didn't have to accept columbia university's.
i think that it could possibly have been dangerous for president bush to speak in iran as well. perhaps that is another reason why he didn't accept...
i don't know much about ferdowsi university - are they holocaust deniers? do they want to destroy israel like ahmadinejad does? answers to these questions might explain why they invited president bush to speak and how they might have reacted.
alos, in that article, there were many quotes from bollinger - do you think they were appropriate or acceptable? if so, why? if not, how should bollinger have introduced ahmadinejad? how would you have introduced him?
-coe
I agree with coe's statement that in order to understand Bush's rational it would be important to get background on Ferdowsi University... I tried looking it up for more information but the only information I found (that was in english) was a bit from wikipedia that didn't say much...
I think even more importantly than whether ferdowsi unviersity is holocaust deniers or anti-israel is whether they hold the same views of the US as ahmadinejad. if they do, going there probably posed a security threat for bush, as well as that faact that if Bush has accepted it would be making a very political statement.
If Bush had accepted do you think people would consider that he is giving credibility to ahmadinejad's views? Would he recieve a similar 'welcome' as ahmadinejad?
answering coe's question... I do not think that bollinger introduced ahmadinejad appropriately... Would people consider it acceptable to introduce Bush in a similar fashion? Is it appropriate to invite someone and then be disrespectful?
I think it would have been very interesting to see President Bush speak in Iran. Although i am not surprised at all that he denied, i really would like to see the Iranian student's reactions to the President. Don't forget, although the government heads may be holocaust denying/Israel hating fundamentalist, a vast majority of the citizens, especially the younger, college generation, are pro-west and pro-USA.
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