Carl M. Cannon:
It’s unfair to the vast majority of U.S. college communities that held heartening graduation exercises this spring, but the 2014 graduation season will be remembered for the anti-intellectual thuggery that marred ceremonies at various Eastern schools.
Brandeis University began the ignominious parade by disinviting Somali feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam, to speak at its commencement after Muslim students complained. The administration also rescinded its honorary degree—an award Ali never requested—and then, to justify its capitulation, publicly denigrated her.
“What was initially intended as an honor,” she noted drily, “has now devolved into a moment of shaming.”
Emboldened, small factions of leftist students and professors at other schools threatened to disrupt their commencement ceremonies over speakers they found objectionable. The upshot was that scheduled talks by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Rutgers), International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde (Smith College), and former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau (Haverford) were canceled.
To cover up their cowardice, school administrators claimed these speakers withdrew on their own. This was only technically correct. The speakers had little choice after the protesters’ vowed to throw tantrums unless they got their way—by disrupting the ceremonies—and the school presidents meekly succumbed.
Haverford partially redeemed itself by inviting as a replacement former Princeton University President William G. Bowen. He had the gravitas—and the stones—to use his speech to call out the bullying students as “immature” and “arrogant” while characterizing Birgeneau’s withdrawal as a “defeat” for the Quaker college’s own ideals.
The goofiest cancellation came at Smith College. You might think that France’s first female finance minister—who oversees loans to Third World countries in need of capital investment—might be an inspiration to Smith’s graduating women. But apparently at elite U.S. colleges, the jury is still out on the debate between capitalism and Marxism.
The tackiest behavior was at Rutgers, where in their panic to replace Condi Rice, school administrators invited two replacement speakers—without telling the other one. Then again, Rutgers is the school that forced out its athletic director after the men’s basketball coach was videotaped abusing players and then hired a new athletic director accused of doing the same thing when she coached college volleyball. When confronted, this molder of young minds expressed her wish that New Jersey’s best newspaper, which uncovered the allegations, would fold—a neat summarization of Rutgers’ commitment to free expression.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/18/my-commencement-speech-to-rutgers-geniuses-go-forth-and-fail.html
PJ O’Rourke wrote a great piece on this
Michelle: #1
Thank you. I read his piece and thought it was excellent.