Boston
TWO HOURS BEFORE the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, arrived at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to deliver a lecture on ethics, the scene outside was relatively calm. There were only a handful of protestors, some of whom were holding signs. One exclaimed that “Inviting Mohammad Khatami to Lecture on Ethics is Like Inviting Jeffery Dahmer to Lecture on Cooking.” Another read, “Hey Harvard, this is what freedom of speech looks like,” above the Muhammad caricature which had set off the cartoon riots earlier this year (you can see some excellent photos of the protestors, courtesy of Publius Pundit, here).
Susan Johnson had driven to Cambridge from Londonderry, New Hampshire, with her husband and two small children for the protest. She told me that this was only the second time in her life she’d joined in a protest. Her husband explained their road trip was evidence that “there are still some Americans willing to get off their ass on a Sunday to protest this moron.” Still, the Johnsons’ seemed most offended by the fact that the lecture was on the eve of the fifth anniversary of September 11. They didn’t believe Khatami shouldn’t have been speaking at Harvard, they just thought the timing was “disrespectful.”
