The students gained, the university gained, academic freedom gained. We had the opportunity to speak openly and challenge a particularly heinous world leader, and we didn't give him the velvet glove treatment or back down from basic liberal principles like conservative talking heads assumed we would. This wasn't a political move; Columbia University is not the United States government, so whether or not Ahmadinejad has juicy footage is beside the point.
And we can't say for certain whether this will affect change or not. He at least agreed to let Columbia students and faculty visit schools in Iran and engage students there. Might happen, might not.
The full program should be up on
http://www.cutelevision.org/ later today.