Following is a transcript of remarks made by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger in his address to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York on Monday 24 September.
Bollinger has been criticized by American politicians and Jewish organizations for inviting Ahmadinejad.
On the Iranian president's denial of the Holocaust
''In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.
For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.
You should know that Columbia is a world center of Jewish studies and now, in partnership with the YIVO Institute, of Holocaust studies.
Since the 1930s, we’ve provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren.
The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the “debate” over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity’s capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue’s first line of defense.
Will you cease this outrage?"
On the destruction of Israel
"Twelve days ago, you said that the state of Israel “cannot continue its life.” This echoed a number of inflammatory statements you have delivered in the last two years, including in October 2005 when you said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
"Columbia has over 800 alumni currently living in Israel. As an institution we have deep ties with our colleagues there. I personally have spoken out in the most forceful terms against proposals to boycott Israeli scholars and universities, saying that such boycotts might as well include Columbia. More than 400 college and university presidents in this country have joined in that statement. My question, then, is: Do you plan on wiping us off the map, too?"
