Fenster Moop has a terrific post on the problem with polemical commencement addresses, with a very telling example. You should read it.
Fenster Moop has a terrific post on the problem with polemical commencement addresses, with a very telling example. You should read it.
It is not surprising that people like E.L. Doctorow feel that they have a right and duty to turn a commencement speech into a political diatribe. After all, how can they not use the occasion to look for sycophantic approval from the Left-wing faculty? Look at me, I think the same way you do, I belong! I am sure that the faculty was more embarrassed than Mr. Doctorow. After having these students for four years, look how they turned out. They are just a bunch of right-wing bigots. Where oh where did the faculty go wrong? If this keeps up, the school may end up loosing its accreditation. After all, if you can
After hearing that last year’s commencement speaker for the UH graduate ceremony was a lesbian activist who chose the occasion to rail against Hawaii for not being as “tolerant” as it once was, I was fully prepared to boycott my own ceremony this May. However, my family urged me to attend so they could see me walk across the stage, so I decided to go. I warned them that there was no telling what kind of anti-war, anti-Bush sentiments they might hear from the speaker, since Iraq is such a hot topic these days. Judging from the number of professors this year who plastered their office doors with anti-Bush editorials and cartoons, I could only imagine. As soon as I found out who the speaker would be, I did a little research on him, and was somewhat relieved at what I found. As it turned out, the speech by David Matthews (CEO of Kettering Foundation), was not only politically neutral, it was interesting and inspiring as well. It made an already happy day all the better.
Mary – Congratulations on your graduation! (And on not having to endure a typical commencement address.)
I did boycott my own commencement. Not because of the speaker (I dont even know who it was), but because of the president of the university. After all of the multicultural policies and leftist ideological garbage that came from this man (not to mention the annual 10-15% tuition increases with no clear return on my investment), the thought of walking across the stage and shaking his hand did not appeal to me at all.
Considering Julian Bond (NAACP) was our speaker for Commencement at Longwood University, I say I’d rather have someone attacking my personal politics than someone personally attacking me and my family for oppressing the education of blacks in the late-50s-early-60s.
I guess he just assumed that no one, who may have gone to the “tax-supported white school,” would attend a superiorly diverse institution as Longwood. *Snickers*
Maybe my reasoning is that I’ve found that one benefit of obtaining a Liberal Arts Degree has been the gained attribute of tuning out when someone (namely unnamed professors) gets up on their soapbox (during class no less) and attacks my politics. I’ve learned to just nod, smile, maybe laugh at one of their politically charged one-liners every once in awhile, and continue voting for who supports the majority of my beliefs.
The best thing about Bond’s speech, though, wasn’t the usual *feel sad for us, we’re black* crap he spoke about, it was the fact that his speech was shorter (at least to me, who listened to see exactly how much he’d bash the whites, like my father, who lost his school-he was only nine at the time- too) than the woman’s long list of accomplishments introducing him.