GLENN BECK PROGRAM
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GLENN: But first I want to share this with you. I want to share something I told you yesterday that it doesn't -- you don't put him there at the United -- at Columbia University because that's not the real show. The real show is what he gets in the newspapers back home, what they say about him and how they edit things back in the Middle East. That's the real -- that's what Columbia University needed to pay attention to, and they didn't. Well, here's the -- here's the lead from the Iranian newspaper: Despite entire U.S. media objections, negative propagation -- I don't know -- and hue and cry in recent days over President Ahmadinejad's scheduled address at Columbia University. He gave his lecture and answered students' questions here in New York on Monday afternoon. On the second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall from the Iranian president was to give his lecture as of early hours the next day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he said Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.

A student waives an Iranian flag while waiting to listen to the simulcast of a speech by Ahmadinejad on the campus of Columbia University Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 in New York.

So they talk about how he was hailed, how he conquered our media, how he conquered our political system, how he finally, you know, was the champion of freedom of press and -- or freedom of speech and he went and he was hailed with a standing ovation. This is what Columbia University was forgetting about, refusing to look at. If you are a university student and the university students look to America for hope, if you're a university student over in Iran, you had to read the paper today and say, what were they thinking? Why would they do this? Why would they empower the guy? But it's not just this. It's not just how they spun the story.

Yesterday Lee Bollinger, he's the president of the university and he got up, and if you heard any bit of this speech, it was tremendous. He got up and he said, oh, this is horrible, you're a horrible, despicable human being, you question the Holocaust, you are a hatemonger and, you know, he really took him to task. He did a great job. And I was in the newsroom yesterday and I was screaming at the top -- everybody in my staff was laughing because I'm screaming at the television: What difference does this speech make? It makes no difference! It might make you feel good, but it makes no difference whatsoever on the world stage. Nobody's going to hear that! Well, I was wrong. I was wrong.

The students did hear the speech and this is the way the BBC reported. Listen to this. This is BBC World. They said that Lee Bollinger came out and said some bad things about President Ahmadinejad but the Columbia students that were there in the room, this is how they responded.

VOICE: President Ahmadinejad was very diplomatic and he avoided some sharp edges kind of diplomatically and it was interesting to see. The whole event was to accentuate the fact that certain ideals in America such as free speech are present whereas they aren't in the police state Iran. But just like his introduction how he had accusatory tone kind of went against that whole ideology.

VOICE: Well, you were covering it for the student radio there at Columbia. What do you make of those points that really perhaps it's not actually free speech if the president of Columbia gets up and is so accusatory and calls his guest a cruel and petty dictator before he even begins?

VOICE: Well, I feel like President Bollinger's initial remarks were mainly reflecting the media pressure that was placed on him. I think he was put in a position where he felt like he needed to come out and say those remarks against the president of Iran because there was such a pressure on him to be hostile and to be openly against views that Iran espouses.

VOICE: So was it free speech then, do you think, Mikhail, if President Bollinger came out and made these remarks before President Ahmadinejad had even said anything?

VOICE: I think the whole forum was compromised by the way that President Bollinger came out and was very accusatory towards our President Ahmadinejad before he had anything to say.

GLENN: Stop, stop. I can't take it! These are the students of Columbia and they are telling the world on BBC World that it was the media pressure that caused Bollinger to say these hateful things, and the whole thing was compromised. It wasn't freedom of speech because he took him down. What happened to Bollinger's freedom of speech? Do you see what's happening here? Not only has the world spun the media over on the Middle East side, the media and the rest of the world is spinning this as something that they didn't pick up Bollinger's speech. They're picking up the useful idiot Columbia students who are dismissing the speech and saying that was just propaganda. That was propaganda. We live -- we are -- I've got to tell you something. These universities, I don't -- professors, you should run for your life. I used to be afraid of you. I used to think you were the idiots. Run for your life. You're surrounded by morons every time class is in session.

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