Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi plans to answer questions about the spread of democracy in a teleconference Thursday with Columbia Univeristy professors and Administration officials. The landmark event will be moderated by none other than Lisa Anderson, Dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
In January, it was revealed that before Anderson was named to a special committee convened to investigate student complaints about professors' hostility to Israel, she took a trip to Saudi Arabia that she acknowledges was "largely" paid for by Saudi Aramco, the kingdom-owned oil company. The committee for the most part cleared the accused scholars of blame, prompting critics to describe their report as a whitewash.
Qadhafi, who came to power in a military coup in 1969, has proposed a Middle East peace plan that calls from the elimination of Israel and the creation of a binational state called the Federal Republic of the Holy Land.
The State Department, in its latest worldwide survey of human rights practices, rated Libya "poor" but said it had shown some improvement. It said Libya had a large but unknown number of political prisoners, and severely limits freedom of speech and the press.
In a January op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune, Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth said: "Still, Libya remains a closed and tightly controlled society. There is no independent press or civil society, and there are no political groups that are not officially sanctioned."
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