An article that appeared in the NYU Washington Square Newspaper after the NYU chapter of World Can’t Wait and students from Hunter and Manhattan College, disrupted U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s lecture on the dangers of Iran’s growing nuclear weapons program.
John Bolton, also know as the “Armaggedon Ambassador”, is an extreme right- wing member of the Federalist Society and has opposed international law that would restrict the U.S. from torture, stockpiling nuclear weapons and increasing global warming.
Students protest U.N. ambassador’s speech
Haley Pelton
Staff Writer
March 02, 2006
Six students from NYU, Manhattan College and Hunter College were escorted out of Kimmel Center last night after silently protesting with signs and gestures during U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s lecture on the dangers of Iran’s growing nuclear weapons program.
As part of its Selma Ruben Distinguished Lecture Series, the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life hosted the lecture by Bolton, who drew controversy last March after his nomination was twice filibustered by Democrats and spurred five months of debate on the Senate floor. Because Bolton refutes the necessity of the U.N., he has been met with criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Bolton’s lecture concerning the state of Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program and the U.N. Security Council’s various deliberations on the topic was interrupted midway when the students stood, turned their backs on him and held posters emblazoned with slogans mocking Bolton and denouncing the Bush Administration.
“John Bolton is not a qualified U.N. ambassador,” said Laela Lautrec, a freshman at Hunter College who protested the event. “The conservative preventative diplomacy has made little effort to avoid physical combat, and that is just not acceptable.”
In his lecture, Bolton discussed reports sent forth by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, he said, prove that Iran has been actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, aside from those utilized in energy production.
“Slowly but surely, the scope of the Iranian weapons program has become clear,” Bolton said. “I’ve read every word of every report and it tells a truly disturbing story.”
The ambassador discussed U.N.-sanctioned offers from Russia to sell high-grade uranium to Iran on the condition that it will cease to produce it “indigenously” for the purpose of nuclear weaponry, and said instituting a democratic government in Iran might prompt the nation to drop their weapons programs.
“I think if you have a democratic government in Iran, they would give up nuclear weapons, too,” Bolton said.
Bolton also affirmed the necessity of a recent U.N. resolution to instate rules banning nations with human rights violations from representation in the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“No country should be eligible that is under Security Council supervision for gross human rights offenses,” he said.
The protesters said they were prompted to attend the address after learning about it from “The World Can’t Wait,” an activist organization dedicated to “driving out the Bush regime.”
“The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is the largest human rights violator in the world,” said a Gallatin sophomore who preferred not to be named.
Lautrec said Bolton’s presence at the Bronfman Center in front of a largely Jewish audience was unimportant.
“We’re definitely not anti-Israel,” Lautrec said. “That has nothing to do with this.”
Manhattan College student Ronan O’Brien and Steinhardt sophomore Abbey Stawick also participated in the protest, along with two other NYU students who declined to give their names.
CAS sophomore Nora Valencia, a member of the audience, said Bolton’s address stressed his “insider” viewpoint too much.
“I think he took advantage of the audience by assuming that we didn’t have a lot of the information that he was speaking about,” Valencia said.
Before Bolton’s lecture, index cards were distributed to the audience to write questions, which could then be posed to Bolton by a Bronfman Center student representative. Steinhardt sophomore Meena Shah said many of the hard-hitting questions asked of Bolton sounded censored.
“It just seemed like everyone was in his pocket,” Shah said. “Is he afraid of an open dialogue with NYU students?”
Local political consultant Matt Welch, 23, said he felt that Bolton failed to present anything new to the audience.
“It was just basically a typical stage for him to regurgitate the same old administrative talking points,” Welch said. “You juxtapose that with the startlingly unsophisticated questioning, whether is was due to censoring of questions or lack of imagination, and it made for a pretty uninformative experience.”
For more background on the possible U.S military invasion of Iran check out:
Who Will Blow the Whistle Before We Attack Iran?
By Ray McGovern
Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to UN Post