Armin Rosen of Reason Magazine presents a powerful argument against Columbia University’s invitation to Ethiopia’s genocidal tyrant:
Whoever signed off on inviting Meles Zenawi to speak at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum probably figured that the Ethiopian dictator’s obscurity would protect the school from any criticism. Let me be the first to prove that person wrong: Zenawi is like a watered-down Robert Mugabe meets a watered-down Omar al-Bashir; a strongman who has impoverished his own people in order to maintain his stranglehold on power, and who has exploited his country’s strategic significance in order to gain the backing of the United States. I suppose he could offer Columbians a hell of a seminar on dictatorial self-preservation—on how to install puppet governments in neighboring nations with the military and diplomatic blessing of the most powerful country on earth; on how to violently steal elections while provoking minimal global outcry; on how to run a country that’s 171st on the UN’s Human Development Index. One wonders, however, whether such a master class in the infliction of widespread human misery is really worth both the aggrandizement of one of the world’s worst tyrants—and the potential hit to Columbia’s reputation that could come as a result. Like what could possibly justify this? …
Rosen concludes with this:
There was just an election in Ethiopia. Zenawi’s party won 99% of the vote amidst widespread allegations of fraud. In the case of Zenawi’s speaking invitation, any expansion of our own understanding of free speech (which is a dubiously self-reflexive justification for free-speech, if you haven’t noticed) will come at the expense of the actual free speech of Ethiopia’s opposition, whose oppressor will soon be feted at one of the top universities on earth. The irony, of course, is that those whose free speech is curtailed on a daily basis likely understand that the concept is more than just an abstract exercise in achieving the “right temperament”—and that free speech is hardly protected by honoring those who have absolutely no respect for it.
Columbia University’s daily paper, Columbia & Spectator, has written about the invitation to Meles Zenawi and the controversy that it has caused.
World Leaders site raises eyebrows
By Alix Pianin
The World Leaders Forum is no stranger to controversy—its famous invitation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007 set off a firestorm of media and protest—but it was the series’ website that proved inflammatory on Wednesday.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who is scheduled to speak at Low Library on Sept. 22, has allegedly intimidated voters at polls, detained political opponents, and been labeled by the New York Times as an example of “autocratic repression.” So why did Columbia’s World Leaders Forum website refer to such a divisive figure as having demonstrated “seasoned leadership”?
His short biography has since been removed from the website and replaced with a note that he will be speaking on “the current global economy and its impact.” [… read full text]
The following letter was sent to Ethiopian Review today by Robert Hornsby, Director of Media Relations, Columbia University:
from: Robert Hornsby
to: Elias Kifle
The longstanding editorial policy of the World Leaders Forum website has been to provide only the basic factual information about the name of speakers, their bios, date of events and, if provided, the title of remarks. The background information that was posted by staff about the Forum involving the Prime Minister of Ethiopia was obtained from the government’s Mission and was not properly cited as such. We regret that error.
It is not the policy of the World Leaders Forum to take editorial positions of the type inadvertently suggested by this unattributed text and, as is the case with all guest speakers on Columbia’s campus, Prime Minister Zenawi’s invitation to speak at Columbia does not constitute endorsement of his views or his nation’s policies.
Prime Minister Zenawi’s remarks will be followed by an open question and answer period with students and members of our university community. Because we insist that such an open exchange be part of World Leaders Forum events, foreign leaders visiting the University often are confronted with probing questions that they may not face in their home countries. Providing such a forum for debate of controversial ideas and issues is central to the University’s free speech values, its educational mission, and its role as a global center of learning.
Robert Hornsby
Director of Media Relations
Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Columbia University in the City of New York
Rm. 402 Low Library, Mail code 4321
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
Columbia University posted the following statement about Meles Zenawi and later removed it after receiving complaints from angry Ethiopians:
Under the seasoned governmental leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, now in his fourth term, and vision of the Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopia has made and continues to make progresses in many areas including in education, transportation, health and energy. – see here
In response, NitroEthiopians has produced the video below:
Below is a powerful letter addressed to Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz who has invited Ethiopia’s genocidal tyrant to Columbia University to talk about “leadership” in Africa.
– – – – –
Joseph E. Stiglitz
University Professor
Uris Hall, Room 814, Columbia University
3022 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
It is with a great sense of dismay and incredulity that we learned about the invitation extended to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia as a keynote speaker to launch “The World and Africa” series organized by your Committee on Global Thought (CGE) at Columbia.
As recently as May of this year, he stunned the democratic world by declaring a 99.6% victory in an election that was characterized by fraud, intimidation, deceit and coercion. As documented by all credible human rights groups and other international observers, in the run-up to the elections, which were reminiscent of the dark days of communism and fascism, he utterly incapacitated all potential threats to his monopoly of power and subjected the populace to unimaginable degrees of social and economic suffering and political repression.
As a man of letters, we trust that you are all too familiar with the Prime Minister’s appalling records on academic freedom. In Zenawi’s Ethiopia, universities and other institutions of learning are under a state of siege. Absolute loyalty to the ethno-centric regime is a pre-requisite for admission to colleges, and consideration for employment requires card-holding membership to the ruling party. Armed cadres planted among the students openly terrorize those with views that are at variance with the party line, and peaceful protests in campuses are violently crushed, as was the case, for example, on April 18, 2001 when the Special Forces police opened fire on a peaceful protest at Addis Ababa University and killed at least 41 people and wounded 250, or when in January of 1993, hundreds of students were shot and mutilated by Zenawi’s police for peacefully exercising their freedom of expression.
As a respected economist and Nobel Prize laureate, we have no doubt in your appreciation of the spurious growth figures Zenawi fabricates to attract foreign aid, while the country he has governed with an iron fist for two decades ranks at the bottom of the developing world with respect to every index of human development. Despite the billions of dollars in aid that he has amassed and embezzled since he snatched power from another dictator, a recent report placed Ethiopia as the second poorest nation in the world, with 90% of the population living in poverty, and 61.5% deprived of adequate schooling.
We do understand your close partnership with the despot, and your effort to give him legitimacy in the aftermath of his dubious 99.6% victory. The people of Ethiopia still remember the similar effort by your colleague, Jeffrey Sachs, who came to Zenawi’s rescue with the Yara Prize following his crushing defeat in the 2005 elections. Nonetheless, we believe that the motive of giving the dictator a cover for his crimes against humanity through a platform at Columbia University would be inconsistent with the image of the university as a bulwark of human rights, social justice and good governance.
We, therefore, ask that you demonstrate your sensitivity to the plights of the millions of Ethiopians who are suffering under the yolk of dictatorship by withdrawing the invitation extended to Zenawi and using the forum instead for a more genuine discourse on the promotion of democracy and good governance in that part of the world.
The world has never forgiven those intellectuals who willfully embraced and promoted Hitler’s atrocious policies that resulted in the extermination of millions of innocent lives. The verdict of history will be equally unkind on the erudite of our time that collude and cuddle with dictators at the expense of the suffering of millions in one of the poorest countries in the world.
President Lee Bollinger
202 Low Library
535 West 116th Street, Mail Code 4309
New York, NY 10027 [email protected]
University Programs and Events
Office of the President
Columbia University in the City of New York
202 Low Library
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
Email: [email protected]
Office of the Secretary of the University
The Trustees of Columbia University
211 Low Library
535 West 116th Street
Mail Code 4324
New York, NY 10027 [email protected]
Columbia Daily Spectator
2875 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, NY 10025
Email: [email protected]
The TPLF-junta controlled Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported today that Ethiopian Airlines CEO Girma Wake has been replaced by Tewolde G. Mariam.
The news doesn’t indicate why Seyoum Mesfin, chairman of Ethiopian Airlines’ board, decided to replace Girma, who has been a successful CEO.
Up to now, Ethiopian Airlines has been one of the few major institutions in the country who has not been run by a Woyanne Tigrean. The ethnic apartheid regime will not rest until nothing left in the country that is not controlled by one party and one ethnic group.
Tewolde G. Mariam is a relative of Seyoum Mesfin and is said to be a hard core Woyanne who has been preparing himself take over Ethiopian Airlines by working under Girma Wake as chief operating officer.
