Actually, the guy that introduced Abeerandajihad had some good things to say.
NEW YORK - As hundreds protested outside, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University on Monday after a blistering introduction from the school's president, who said the hard-line leader was a dictator with preposterous beliefs.
Ahmadinejad smiled as Columbia President Lee Bollinger took him to task over Iran's human-rights record and foreign policy, as well as Ahmadinejad's statements denying the Holocaust and calling for the disappearance of Israel.
"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said, to loud applause.
He said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant. "When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," Bollinger said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."
“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. “Will you cease this outrage?”
Bollinger, who had been criticized for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak, also described him as having a "fanatical mindset" for making statements like wanting Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
"Do you plan on wiping us off the map too?" Bollinger asked.
Bollinger also raised questions of academic freedom in Iran and asked, "Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq?"
Stating his "revulsion at all you stand for" as Ahmadinejad sat nearby, Bollinger concluded by saying that "I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions — but your avoidance will be meaningful to us."
Bollinger ended his remarks to strong applause from the audience.