With College graduations, there are always the Commencement speakers. An opportunity for various high profile figures to share their pearls of wisdom.
As a frequent graduation attendee (I have a lot of family), these speeches were often thought provoking and not always in line with my thoughts or beliefs, but we all listened respectfully regardless and maybe gleaned a little more insight to views, resonant or opposing, that we otherwise would not have had. An opportunity to perhaps learn a little something while sitting at an institution of education. How befitting.
But we seem to be moving away from these inadvertent exposures to education and enlightenment. Over the past few weeks of College graduations, there has been evidence of an under current of intolerance resulting in Commencement speakers getting uninvited for fear of saying or presenting something that can’t be “unheard” or “unseen”.
Harvard Students wanted to uninvite their Commencement speaker because several students disagreed with his views on education. After all, Brandeis uninvited their Honorary guest amongst protest and students and faculty succeeded in causing voluntary withdrawls like at Smith College and Rutgers University.
Political columnist Matt Bai offers this theory on how we have come to this.
How does this tie into Newton? Well, I can’t help think of recent attempts at banning a speaker or a theatre production as our own little evidence of trying to cocoon ourselves.
What do you think?
Greer, the reason the students of the Harvard School of Education were upset at the choice of speaker is because he was the antithesis of what the students were taught. The articles I read (The Crimson, various education blogs, etc.) he is a close friend to the Dean of the school, has made a lot of the right contributions to the right political campaigns and supports high stakes testing, CCSS and lifting the cap on for-profit charter schools (at the expense of shutting down public schools) and Teach For America.
In other words,according to those who have written about the subject, they believe he holds values that threatens many of those graduates as they move forward into a career in education. It would be the equivalent of inviting the head of the Creationist museum of the head of the Flat Earth Society to speak to the graduates at MIT. There was no faculty or student input, this was a closed room deal that felt like a slap in the face to the graduating students.
So yeah, I understand the backlash there. I do believe he should have been invited to speak to students in a forum where they could question and debate views, just not at their commencement where they didn’t have a chance to debate his perspective.
College students and recent grads think they know more than they do… ironically they are often some of the most close minded people out there. I just graduated from Umass this year (albeit a little older having served in the military) and students and recent graduates think that because they went to college they are somehow experienced or worldly, and know the “right way to do things.” Try having the VP of the UMass “college democrats” explain to you the merits of why we are still in Afghanistan (they are pro-war as long as it has Obama’s sign-off) within months of you getting back, and countering your points with “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” This is overwhelmingly the attitude of college students. They saw something on youtube and that coupled with their education mean they know everything.
Our commencement speaker was Deval Patrick, a person with which whom I disagree with on pretty much every topic, his speech was almost a campaign speech, it sucked and was irrelevant. I still wouldn’t protest him being our commencement speaker once he was selected, because he still could have said something pretty interesting, his personal story for example is supposedly pretty impressive (though I wouldn’t know because he just talked about his accomplishments for 20 minutes).
I guess this was more of a rant rather than insight, but the bottom line is this: College students are just highschool students with more debt and a mildly furthered education. It is slightly more common to see people who have truly interesting experiences and backgrounds, but for the most part they are the same people they were in high-school, just more arrogant.
Mike
There was a good article on this at
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/22/debacle-becomes-teaching-moment/iVKEEZVDTnINlqXng0YRHL/story.html
[Commencement speaker and former Smith president] Simmons encouraged Smith to invite Lagarde again, insisting that one’s principles are strengthened, not compromised, by listening to opposing views. “Be open-minded,” she said, “fight for those who haven’t the means to protect themselves, work to preserve the spirit of this college as a place for the free exchange of ideas, however much those ideas elicit discomfort, challenge, and debate.”
I love how left-wing extremists show what open-minded liberals they are by banning speakers that don’t confirm with their politically correct left-wing litmus tests.
It’s a crying shame that this is the current state of affairs. And it breeds a vicious circle, too – at each iteration, the alternate perspectives you are willing to consider grow fewer and fewer, until you’re left with nothing more than an echo chamber.
It’s not a left or right issue (as “left” speakers get cancelled too – see above re: BC and Cardinal O’Malley). Of course there was also the time parents threw a hissy over Jim Henson addressing Harvard Students (NOTE: Harvard has several speakers for each school’s ceremony and one main commencement speaker so the speaker at the Ed school was ONLY for the Ed school and not the main commencement speaker and Henson was also addressing one school, not the main student body).
I think it’s one thing to have a speaker present when there’s a chance for debate and discussion but commencement speakers should be that short, simple you made it now go forth into the world sort of speaker. It is also who a school can afford because you have to fly them in, put them up and then supply an “honorarium” of some type as well. Some speakers donate it back to the school, some say, “Why thank you,” as they take a picture of the check for instant deposit.
My commencement speaker at (what is now) UMass Dartmouth was Barney Frank. It was his fifth appearance on campus that year and we wrote an editorial in student paper pointing out he was on campus so often he should have his own meal pass. I will give him this, he kept it short, sweet and funny and he also donated his honorarium to the Vet’s club on campus to help fund their activities. He wasn’t special and that was kind of sad for us.
Students are calling for more input into the process. It may not be a bad idea.
Like I said, debate and discussion – bring in the opposing view of the student body and start opening dialogues. Commencement should be short, sweet and, quite honestly, a someone vanilla person.
My son’s commencement speaker was someone I’d never heard of before, and I admit to being disappointed when I compared it to the school that had Graham Nash of CSN leading the audience in “Teach Your Children”. Then I went to commencement and was blown away by the speaker’s compassion and passion for his humanitarian work and ended up sharing the video of the speech with my friends on FB because it was so excellent. I doubt he had a cent to donate to the school, and that’s just fine.
John Sununu, then White House Chief of Staff John Sununu for President George H.W. Bush was the keynote speaker, and I was the student speaker at my law school graduation ceremony. In his speech, Sununu praised Bush as the “master of the small gesture” for his handling of foreign affairs. Just four months after the release of Nelson Mandela, I used the opportunity to address my classmates to ask why the Bush administration had not done more to end apartheid in South Africa. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill gave the keynote address at the undergraduate commencement ceremony, and blasted the Bush administration for inaction on many fronts. It is probably safe to say that the graduates, parents and faculty all found someone whose speech they could disagree with that day.
When I was on the editorial board of law review, there was a major controversy over the previous board’s choice of speakers, which included Sarah Weddington, who argued and won Roe v. Wade in the US Supreme Court which upheld a woman’s freedom of choice, Randall Terry, founder of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue, and Edwin Meese, Attorney General in the Reagan Administration. Colleagues on both sides of the abortion issue found something not to like about the choice of the first two speakers, but there was a major uproar over Meese, who had resigned under investigation by a special prosecutor over the Iran-Contra Affair. Many of my classmates and some law school alumni demanded that I, as director of the law review’s lecture series, “uninvite” Meese, not only because of his involvement in Iran-Contra but also the erosion of Fourth Amendment rights advocated by the Department of Justice during his tenure as Attorney General. While my sympathies lay with them, I decided that it was better to allow him to speak–and offer the opportunity for vigorous questioning from fellow students and faculty–than to cave to pressure and cancel the lecture. By a razor thin majority, the editorial board of the law review upheld my decision.
I fully support diversity of expression of opinion in the marketplace of ideas. But I also empathize with students and support their right to protest the invitation of keynote speakers and the award of honorary degrees to recipients who stand for principles they find abhorrent or unjust. And I also support the right of students to protest the decisions of the administrations of colleges and universities who disinvite speakers who hold controversial beliefs, even when they are not in line with the institution’s founding principles.
In Whitney v. California, where the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of an organizer of the Communist Labor Party, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote a brilliant defense of freedom of speech, in which he reminded his fellow justices and the nation that when confronted by the free expression of thoughts or beliefs that we detest, “the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
If you can support that, no matter which side of the issues you are on, then you truly get what freedom of speech is all about.
@Karla I actually don’t fault the students for protesting. As Ted says, protesting is also a freedom of expression. However, I do fault the school for not having the backbone to stand by their choice and decision.
I actually think it would be very interesting to have the head of the Creationist Museum of the Flat Earth Society give the Commencement speech at MIT. If done well, it would give them all something to think about. How about a speaker who thinks Global Warming is a myth? I’d think all the environmental engineers and scientist would have a field day with that.
Protesting is one thing. Banning is another. Protesting is expressing a difference of opinion. Banning expresses a desire to oppress another point of view.
That is the distinction that does make us Americans seem like we are always arguing, it is hard work and it is uncomfortable. But it is key to our freedom and democracy.
There is an important caveat which applies here: when the government bans controversial speech or expression it is censorship; when a private university or college does it, it is censure not censorship and does not abridge constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
An invitation to give a commencement speech and award an honorary degree implies approval or imprimatur. A private college or university does not have to provide a forum for a speaker whose beliefs contradict the institution’s founding principles. So I would have no problem with Brandeis University disinviting a speaker and refusing to award an honorary degree to someone who was a self-proclaimed anti-Semite, or with Boston College for refusing to award an honorary degree and provide a platform for a speaker who is pro-choice at commencement. I would, however, have a problem with a private institution which disinvites a speaker at a forum where the audience may participate by asking hard questions because their beliefs are controversial, but not on constitutional grounds.
The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and religion, as well as freedom of association. Neither an individual nor a private institution should be compelled to associate with someone with whose thoughts or belief they vehemently disagree. Which is why I don’t have a problem with a private educational institution uninviting a speaker and not giving him or her an honorary degree in response to student protests on the basis that the speaker’s beliefs are fundamentally at odds with the principles upon which it was founded.
Ted, I agree with your comment / position. Yet, I do question an institution that would need to disinvite a speaker because the speaker’s beliefs are at odds with the institution’s fundamental beliefs and principles. Why would that issue not have been vetted and discussed before the initial invitation was offered? The institution should be consistant with either staying with its beliefs and principles or it should take the position of welcoming differing opinions.