Harvard Dean Defends Inviting Khatemi To Speak
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government defended the decision to invite a former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatemi, to speak on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“Do we listen to those that we disagree with and vigorously challenge them, or do we close our ears completely?” Dean David Ellwood said in an interview published yesterday in the Boston Globe.
Mr. Ellwood said he approved the invitation, first proposed by faculty after they learned Mr. Khatemi would be speaking at the United Nations.
September 10 was the only date available, the dean said.
He also emphasized that Mr. Khatemi would not be allowed to visit unless he was willing to take unscripted questions.
Harvard has been criticized for the timing of its invitation to Mr. Khatemi, who is in the middle of a two-week tour of America. Mr. Khatemi already has spoken in Chicago and at the United Nations and will attend two Islamic conferences as well as deliver a speech at the National Cathedral in Washington.
Mr. Khatemi is the most senior Iranian to travel outside New York in this country since Islamic extremists seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held Americans hostage for 444 days.
On Saturday, Mr. Khatemi spoke in the Chicago area and said American foreign policy triggers terrorism and violence in the world but that American Muslims can play a key role in promoting peace and security.
The timing of Mr. Khatemi’s visit to Harvard has been denounced in the Boston Herald and The New York Sun, which ran a front page editorial.
“The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, fresh from having established itself as a headwater of anti-Israel agitation, is choosing to mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in an astounding way by hosting Mohammed Khatemi, a former president of Iran, an enemy state levying a terrorist war against America,” the Sun wrote. “Mr. Khatemi has been invited to speak on, of all things, ‘Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.'”
