Reporting for the Washington Post more than a year ago, Paul Farhi highlighted a pair of college commencement speakers who backed out after vocal protests from students.
Renowned neurosurgeon and conservative folk hero Ben Carson withdrew his speaking role at Johns Hopkins following an uproar over his remarks on homosexuality, while former World Bank president Robert Zoellick did the same at Swarthmore College, his alma mater, over objections to his past support of the Iraq War and his record at the institution.
“College campuses are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas,” Farhi wrote. “But some ideas, and some people, are less welcome than others these days.”
Farhi’s story could easily serve as a template for this year, too — and the year after that and the year after that. Indeed, as Farhi noted, protests surrounding commencement speakers “have become so common that they’re practically a springtime ritual, like the opening of the baseball season or the blossoming of daffodils.”
It should surprise no one then that this year’s commencement preparations followed a similar pattern, with Condoleezza Rice, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde and former University of California-Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgenau all backing out of their speaking slots following protests from students and faculty alike.
And yet, the reaction to this latest string of withdrawals suggests that the commencement protests have been unusually high this year or are symptomatic of a narrow-minded generation.
In a particularly glib column for The Daily Beast, Olivia Nuzzi wrote that her fellow millennials need to “STFU” and listen to perspectives that differ from their own.
“Millennials have grown up in a world where you are never forced to see, hear or read anything that you haven’t personally selected. 7,000 TV channels, a DVR to skip commercials, millions of websites—we have been able to curate our own little worlds using technology, wherein nothing unpleasant or offensive can creep in,” Nuzzi wrote.
“So when we’re forced to sit through a commercial or, heaven forbid, listen to someone talk who isn’t Mary-freakin’-Poppins, we can’t handle it.”
If only Nuzzi had been around to scold Vassar College’s class of 1980, which chased out conservative icon William Buckley Jr. as its commencement speaker. Or the class of 1987 at Lafayette College, which pressured former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick from delivering a speech and receiving an honorary degree.
The protests aren’t even limited to college students, campus “leftists” or, for that matter, graduation ceremonies. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln nixed a planned speech in the fall of 2008 by Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers after criticism from conservative bloggers and the state’s Republican governor.
Pro-life activists and other conservative Catholics vocally objected to President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame in 2009. John D’Arcy, the late Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop, boycotted the school’s commencement that year, just as he did in 1992 when Notre Dame honored former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY).
Unlike Rice, Lagarde and Birgenau, Obama and Moynihan went ahead as scheduled despite the noisy complaints.
1981 at Syracuse we had Alexander Haig. I remember a number of protesters as well as the school’s “Daily Orange” not being very happy about it.
It seems to me if someone makes a statement that is rejected by a group or groups who protest their presence at the group’s event, that person has already had the opportunity to exercise free speech. What happened is, their ideas and comments were rejected by (I would presume) a large number of the group’s membership. Free speech guaranties you the right to say what you want. It does not guaranty its acceptance.
Tea party members are free to vilely assault the character and integrity of the President of the United States, that is free speech. I can choose to avoid the Tea Party and reject their ideas. That’s call freedom of association.
The students at John Hopkins should have been protesting Ben Carson’s opinions on EVERYTHING.
Besides, his record is one of going on about all those opinions at inappropriate times and places (wasn’t that a prayer breakfast, with Obama right there besides?) They could only assume he would spew the same crap at their graduation.
Having the comment I write display in one infinitely long line while I type it makes no sense and obviously makes it a lot harder to write.
IMO it’s just common sense not to have commencement speakers primarily known for their political agendas. Why not just have interesting, motivational speakers who can inspire the graduates without trying to focus on a topic likely to offend half of them? Why should one who is celebrating such an important milestone have to listen to torture advocates, right or left-wing crazies, or any other politician? Journalists, philanthropists, business leaders, even entertainers - it seems like there’s a wide enough variety of options for some of these clueless administrators to choose from without offending large numbers of graduates and their families.