I never get invited to the cool conferences

A perennial fear that plagues aspiring policy wonks and scholars is the concept that they will be shut out from all the high-powered conferences and projects that are going on in their field. I thought I was over that fear, but, gosh darn it, I didn't get the invite to this cool conference in Tehran that's "debating" the Holocaust. I mean, this keynote speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks like a killer: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered. Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state. "Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said. "Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added. His words received warm applause from delegates at the Holocaust conference, who included ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel Jews and European and American writers who argue the Holocaust was either fabricated or exaggerated.... Delegates at the meeting earlier on Tuesday agreed to form a "fact-finding" committee to study the Holocaust. The head of the new committee, identified as Iranian academic Mohammad Ali Ramin, said its members were "not racist or opposed to any particular group". "Rather they are just seeking the truth to set humanity truly free," the ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying, without naming the committee members.Apparently, some students were not too keen to hear this message, according to the Scotsman's Michael Theodoulou: A conference of the world's most prominent Holocaust deniers opened in Iran yesterday amid international condemnation and protests by dozens of Iranian students, who burned pictures of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and chanted "death to the dictator". Never has the hardline leader, who was giving a speech at a university in Tehran yesterday, faced such open hostility at home. One student said the crowd was protesting against the "shameful" Holocaust conference - which was organised after Mr Ahmadinejad described the murder of six million Jews by Nazis a "myth" invented to justify the occupation of Palestinian land - and the "fact that many activists with student movements have not been allowed to attend university". The conference "has brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world", the activist added. The protest will be deeply embarrassing for the president, who has portrayed Iran as champion of free speech in hosting the event, organised by the Iranian foreign ministry. The two-day meeting has attracted "revisionist" historians with jail records in Europe, and David Duke, an American former Ku Klux Klan leader. Professors and researchers from France to Indonesia arrived at the plush conference centre in an upmarket north Tehran suburb to give papers on topics such as "Irrational Vocabulary of the American Professorial Class with Regards to the Holocaust". The conference has embarrassed many ordinary Iranians, who are aware of the damage such events are inflicting on their country's image. Mr Ahmadinejad responded to the burning of his pictures by protesters at Amir Kabir University by saying: "Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burned in the path of true freedom, independence and justice." Hmmm... embarrassing does seem to be a word that keeps cropping up about this conference.