5/20: Admiral William H. McRaven at the University of Texas, Austin
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Reaction is beginning to set in against the campus trend of letting angry protesters act to remove commencement speakers they don’t like. In one of the three graduation speeches at Haverford College yesterday, former Princeton President William G. Bowen criticized both Robert Birgeneau for withdrawing as a commencement honoree, and the activist students and professors who pressured Birgeneau to withdraw. Bowen called the […]
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“Disinvitation season” keeps on rolling: this time, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has withdrawn as the commencement speaker at Smith College. The IMF is one of the world’s most important international agencies, and Lagarde is the first woman to lead it. But achievement is not enough for Smith students, who demand intellectual conformity as well: a petition asking […]
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Universities have two contradictory traditions: one of searching for truth and, alongside it, one of mindless, self-righteous protests. The Rutgers University protests against giving Condoleezza Rice an honorary degree at the 2014 Commencement belongs to the second tradition. Having served on the Rutgers faculty from 1951 to 2003, I know that this demonstration was not […]
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Posted by Michael Poliakoff and Avi Snyder It’s a sad day for Rutgers University. Amidst widespread student and faculty protests over her selection as Rutgers’ commencement speaker, Condoleezza Rice has turned down her invitation. In a statement, she said that her background in academia allows her to “understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony”; to that end, she […]
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Cross-posted from the Volokh Conspiracy In a previous post, I noted that Brandeis University had previously declined to disinvite a controversial commencement honoree (Tony Kushner), on the grounds that Brandeis honors people for their achievements without vetting their political views. This conflicts with Brandeis’s stated rationale for disinviting Hirsi Ali; Brandeis acknowledges that it continues […]
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A college commencement is a splendid time to celebrate student achievement. But it’s “disinvitation season” again, as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education observes: the time when intolerant students and faculty advocate against their school’s choice of commencement speaker, sometimes causing the speaker to be disinvited. These power-hungry protesters demonstrate how little they have learned […]
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Rutgers’s faculty and campus newspaper are offering one final lesson for its seniors: don’t engage with opposing views. On the recommendation of its Board of Governors, New Jersey’s flagship public university has invited Condoleezza Rice to address the graduating class of 2014. Dr. Rice, of course, is both an accomplished scholar and dedicated public servant. […]
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In the search for substance in the sea of edifying platitudes in commencement addresses, I came upon Ben Bernanke’s thoughtful list of ten suggestions or observations on life after graduation he gave at Princeton’s tradition-laden Baccalaureate. It’s the rare graduation address that’s clearly worthy of commentary, analysis that inevitably generates some criticism. Here is one […]
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Leon Wieseltier has offered a welcome and inspiring set of reflections for the graduating class of Brandeis University and for many beyond that campus. In a time when nearly every campus is experiencing a collapse in confidence in the role of the humanities, and a corresponding rush to justify education purely in terms of narrowly-conceived […]
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Since Stephen Colbert and Cory Booker occupy divergent spheres of American life, they unsurprisingly chose to deliver very different commencement addresses. Colbert, who spoke at the University of Virginia on May 18, devoted much of his address to taking the University down a few pegs. In addition to ribbing UVA’s founder, Thomas Jefferson–who, Colbert joked, […]
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It’s hard to find a “serious” commencement speech that isn’t about remembering that there’s more to life than power and money. And that the secrets of a successful life include following your passion and finding purpose, not to mention giving back to your community. The president’s speech at Morehouse had a few of these insipid […]
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Spring is always a riveting time for observers of American higher education. Indeed, the end of the school year portends two time-honored rituals for our colleges: the announcement of embarrassing information they hope students will forget over the summer and commencement. The latter is especially exciting because it lends higher education an imprimatur that has […]
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