ost significantly, there is nothing resembling a right to be heard.  The First Amendment reads thus: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech . . .”.  It never ever says that anyone has a right to an audience.  That is, the right to an audience does not follow in the wake of the right to free speech.  Accordingly, the failure to invite someone to speak to an audience is not thereby a violation of that person’s right to express her or his views. 

If this is right, then we can ask about any individual the following question: Would it be a good thing to provide that individual with an audience.  This question does not get either an affirmative or a negative answer simply because it is true that the individual in question has a right to speak. 

Suppose a woman’s rape crisis group of 30 members meets regularly.  Would it be a good thing for them to invite to one of their meetings a man—call him Opidopo—who thinks that women prefer to be raped but are unwilling to admit it?  Obviously not.  We may correctly hold that Opidopo is entitled to his opinion and that he is entitled to express it publicly on a street corner, for example.  But from neither of these two truths does it all follow that it would be a good thing for the rape crisis group to invite Opidopo to one of their meetings. 

It would be a good thing to invite him, I suppose, if the women gained some knowledge about why there are men like this Opidopo or if there was reason for the women to believe that they could disabuse Opidopo of his horrendous views.  Listening even to one’s enemy can be an extremely learning experience.  But it need not; and people can have very good reason to believe that doing so would not be. 

This brings me to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejadand his invitation to speak at Columbia University.  Needless to say, President Ahmadinejad had no entitlement to speak at Columbia University.  Had the University not invited him to speak, he would not in any way have been wronged.  Had no university in New York or, for that matter, the entire United States invited President Ahmadinejad to speak, he would not in way have been wronged.  In particular, his right to free speech would not have been violated. 

So the real question, then, has to be was it a good thing to invite him to Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University?  It will be remembered that the right to speak does not entail that one is entitled to be given an audience.  So the question, then, is: Was it a good thing to give Ahmadinejad an audience at Columbia University?

That free speech is a good thing does not, in and of itself, make it a good thing that Columbia University extended an invitation to him.  The example above regarding a woman’s rape crisis group underscores this point.  As I noted, we can imagine a scenario where inviting someone like Opidopo (who believes that woman like being raped) to a woman’s rape crisis meeting woman would be a good thing.  As I noted, one aim could be to understand men like Opidopo.  Another could be to disabuse him of his views.  In either case, the good would be for reasons that are quite independent of the truth that free speech is a good thing.

The second consideration shows that the fact that someone is morally bankrupt is compatible with there being good reasons to invite the person to speak to an audience.  Notice, though, that in the second example that Opidiopo is invited for just the wicked person that he is, because it is supposed that the women will be able to change him from his wicked ways.  There is no pretense that he is an upright man or that listening to him is a good thing in and of itself.  Even in the first case, where the women listen to Opidopo in order to learn about men like him, Opidopo is there to serve the noble aims of the women.  In either case, Opidopo’s right to free speech is not what entitles him to be at the woman’s rape crisis meeting.

Was inviting President Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University a good thing?  This is not obvious to me.  For one thing, I worry about empowering evil, even symbolically.  The man has an absolutely horrible track-record of deep, deep hostile and oppression attitude towards gays; and the women in his society are effectively second class citizens.  Many on the left should be troubled mightily by this.  Then there is his utterly hostile attitude towards Israel—the country which he thinks should be wiped off the map.  Yet, this man can now say that he spoke at Columbia University with all that this implies in terms of prestige.  And that is a form of empowerment. 

Now, I would have been prepared to set aside this empowerment consideration had there been any good reason to believe that Ahmadinejad would have exhibited even a modicum of integrity—had he taken seriously the questions put to him regarding women and gays and Israel.  Ahmadinejad did not; and there was never any reason to believe that he would have done so.  The searching introduction of President Ahmadinejad, by Columbia University's president Lee Bollinger, is about as close as we get to an honest exchange with Ahmadinejad. 

Nor, finally, is there any reason to believe that the richness or the power of the principle of free speech which we rightly hold so dear was in any way whatsoever underwritten or made more secure or more perfect by Columbia University’s speaking invitation to President Ahmadinejad. 

Was inviting President Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University a good thing?  I have indicated that I do not see that this question plausibly admits of an affirmative answer. 

In so many ways, though, the more important point is not whether the question, “Was inviting President Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University a good thing?” admits of an affirmative answer or a negative one, but that in either the correct answer, whatever that might be, does not flow from the truth that he has a right to free speech.  This is because that right has never ever constituted an entitlement to an audience.  The right to speak does not entail the right to be heard by others.  If it did, then the right to free speech, far from being a most majestic and ennobling liberty, would constitute a horrendous form of oppression.