By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. —The other evening I channel-surfed to CSPAN and found former Iranian President Mohommad Khatami answering student questions at Harvard University. I have read that various Jewish groups had protested his invitation there, so I was was interested to see what would happen.

The students had numerous question which I doubt he had ever been confronted with in such a bold manner during his presidency.  How can he speak of world tolerance when his country's current president sponsors cartoon exhibits to deny the Holocaust.  Or when there is violence against gays or when Iran is supporting organizations like the Hezbollah.  Further, the students wanted to know, why is Iran resisting nuclear inspections?  And, what is the fate of Israeli air force officer Ron Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986?

Clearly, Jewish organizations not only had protested Khatami's visit, they inspired many of the questions that the students asked.  Khatami's answers were interesting to say the least.  He conceded that there indeed had been a Holocuast, but he added, the suffering of one people should not be justification to cause others suffering.  He drew a distinction between "violence" against gays and "punishment" of gays.  Under Islamic law, he said unapologetically, homosexuality is a crime, just as adultery is a crime  In some circumstances the death penalty even can be exacted, but this is rarely done.

Hezbollah, in his opinion, is not a terrorist organization, but rather a "resistance movement" which should be distinguished from organizations such as Al Qaeda that engage in actions aimed against civilian populations.  He apparently didn't see any irony in his words regarding against Israeli civilians.  On the nuclear issue, he said that Iran has signed and abides by standard international nuclear agreements; the disagreement is over whether Iran should be required to implement an even higher level of nuclear cooperation.  Finally, he said that he does not know the fate of Arad, but suggested that while people are looking for him, perhaps they might also assist in learning the fate of two Iranian diplomats who also disappeared from Lebanon.

Obviously in this forum there was no opportunity for debate, and so one might argue that it was  a propaganda triumph for Khatami, who by the very nature of the Q&A format had the last word.  But, of course, "last" is a relative term. As words of his comment have been carried over the news media, they have been dissected and criticized.  No doubt his dismissal of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial is still reverberating in Teheran.

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I note that San Diego State University has an interesting speaker's series coming up, although the line-up is not nearly so interesting nor controversial as having the former president of a country with which the United States doesn't even have diplomatic relations. The SDSU Speaker's Series will include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani later this month, Democratic strategist James Carville and conservative columnist Ann Coulter in October, and former U.S. presidential candidates Wesley Clark, a Democrat, and Bob Dole, a Republican, in December.

In 1984, the students at San Diego State University invited a speaker who was perhaps even more controversial than Khatami—the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who was notoriously anti-Semitic.  Jewish groups at that time protested vehemently and the protests helped to spur community support for the creation of SDSU's Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies.  One of the appeals made to the Jewish community at the time was that by supporting the Lipinsky Institute, contributors would help assure a strong and permanent Jewish intellectual presence on the campus as a counter to any kind of anti-Semitism that might be generated by the likes of Farrakhan. 

Ironically, Farrakhan's own security concerns—rather than those of the Jewish community—led to the cancellation of the speech.  Farrakhan wanted to have his own armed body guards search students who attended his lecture.  The university said not only would searches not be permitted, no weapons would be allowed on campus either.  The lecture thereafter was cancelled, apparently by mutual agreement.

Assuming that students came as well prepared with questions for Farrakhan back then as the Harvard student were for Khatami, perhaps Farrakhan's appearance on campus (minus the armed body guards) would not have been so awful as everyone feared.  In an open exchange of ideas, with an unfettered question and answer session an absolute requirement, the cause of truth might have been better served.

All this leads me to a tentative conclusion: The Jewish community does itself a disservice when it tries to foreclose public forums for anti-Semites.  Attempting to deny someone the opportunity to speak may create for that person a sympathy far greater than that person's appearance, unimpeded, might have generated on its own.

This may be true not only of speakers, but of movies and other productions in the arts which our community deems to be anti-Semitic.  I think it is fair to say that Jewish protests in advance of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ helped guarantee it became a blockbuster at the box office. Certainly some religious Christians would have gone to see the movie in any event, but how many other people would have desired to watch a subtitled film in which the characters spoke Latin and Aramaic?

As a worldwide community, we Jews have experienced so much persecution it is to be expected that we would try to act forcefully to prevent its reoccurrence.  However, it is possible our reflex actions are counterproductive.

I also have made the mistake of unfairly prejudging a piece of performance art. With great sincerity I inveighed in 2002 against the San Diego Repertory Theatre's decision to produce The Merchant of Venice.

Convinced that Shakespeare's text required any staging of The Merchant of Venice  to smear us Jews, I had the hubris to suggest that the San Diego Repertory Theatre was, in essence, betraying its supporters in the Jewish community.  I boycotted the performances and urged others to do likewise.  My comments had two effect.  The most prevalent was to cause people to yawn—how many people really cared, after all, about what I  had to say?  But, among the relatively few who did, I perhaps confirmed their prejudices, so, like me, they also stayed away.

As I reflect on all this, in light of Khatami's visit to Harvard, I now think that I should have attended the production with an open mind.  I should have been willing to see whether a new interpretation of The Merchant of Venice could somehow cast Shylock—as the personification of the Jew—in a better light.  I regret now that I didn't go to find out for myself.  Accordingly, though it's late in coming, I'd like to apologize to Sam Woodhouse and Todd Salovey of the San Diego Repertory Theatre, to whom I should have given the benefit of the doubt.

This is my al heit for the High Holy Days.  Probably it should be one of many.