We have been following universities as they cave to protester demands from elaborate settlement deals at Northwestern to the cancelation of commencement at Columbia and USC. Now both Xavier University of Louisiana and the University of Vermont have yielded to expected protests and rescinded invitations to United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Both schools admitted that they were worried about anti-Israel protests. Xavier President Dr. Reynold Verret sent out a letter explaining that “the vast majority of students want to be able to enjoy a commencement ceremony free of disruptions.”
So, once again, a university faced with a cancel campaign has canceled a speaker. Somehow Verret believes that that is a commendable position in yielding to those who would disrupt a commencement. What lesson does that teach these students?
It is the same lesson reinforced by these schools for years that students do not have to tolerate those with opposing views.
An earlier petition denounced the appearance of the U.N. ambassador as “the politicization of our commencement ceremony.”
Notably, it is only “politicized” because the faculty and students disagree with the policies of the Biden Administration. It would not be “politicized” if the schools did what many schools have done: only select liberal speakers and avoid anyone with libertarian or conservative views. In this case, even a liberal diplomat from a liberal administration could not meet the standard.
Universities would rather have speakers who write cringe-worthy commencements with sing-a-longs and bitcoin pitches while high on ayahuasca than a libertarian or republican figure.
For many, that is preferable to hearing from one of the world’s top diplomats at a time of global strife.
At George Washington University, there is no such problem. The university tends to invite far left speakers from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to this year’s Jen Psaki.
Conservative students are expected to be tolerant and not be disruptive. The idea that a Fox host or a conservative senator would be invited as a commencement speaker is unthinkable at most schools. Liberal students are protected from such traumatic exposures at graduation.
Indeed, Psaki will be warmly received as a host on MSNBC who recently stated that the Biden Administration did not go far enough in stopping the last batch of weapons to Israel. Psaki declared that weapons shipments should have been stopped to Israel earlier.
At Vermont, University President Suresh Garimella emphasized that the cancelation was ordered because he and the faculty had listened to their objections. He told students “I see and hear you.” He then matter-of-factly stated that the ambassador was no longer invited while stressing that the students “deserve a weekend of ceremony and celebration befitting their accomplishment.”
What is “befitting” that education is one last cancelation of a speaker holding opposing views.
Longer ago than 60 years ago (approx. 1963 and earlier), UVM (univ. of vermont) had a campus tradition known as Cakewalk. It vanished shortly thereafter because it was considered racially insensitive. That certainly wasn’t the first case of ‘cancellation’ due to racial stereotyping, but it certainly helps explain how a Jewish politician from Brooklyn, NY (Bernie Sanders) could gain such a foothold in Vermont, and in particular in Burlington.
So it really does not come as a surprise that UVM’s current administration would ‘cave’ to these protesters.
To the root of these problems, Why don’t They know how to Fix It?
A long, drawn out Heckler’s Veto for Commencement speakers by the perverse, led by the deviant, as a final performance.
It’s the professors, stupid. Each and every one is paid to twist minds. That’s wicked, those are idiot children destined for the abyss, but we are too weak to end it.
A Republic. If you can keep it.
B. Franklin.
Wait, a liberal Democrat ambassador from a far left administration is cancelled because of holding different views from the left wing student protesters? That doesn’t make any sense.
There’s no there there!
They are there because the Local Communist Political Officer orders their presence regarding local school busing, college admissions, employment hiring, racial contract allotments, movies, television shows, TV commercials, literature, etc.
Africans constitute 12% of the population and are ordered to be included in 100% of organizations, institutions, the scenes on TV, in movies, etc.
Unconstitutional affirmative action, quotas, forced busing, etc., bring out the worst in us.
Most recently, all couples depicted publicly have been ordered to be of mixed race – there’s some freedom for you.
Equity is the absence of bias and favoritism in law.
Freedom, free enterprise, and free markets operate on merit and absolute freedom of choice.
America.
The land of the free.
Not so much.
Cancelling a notable Black woman. Double whammy for the politically correct students. Racist and sexist. See how that PC crap extrapolates in the real world? Time to give up all this silliness.
Someone isn’t proofreading, Professor Turley ?
Maybe they should invite Farrakhan are a jihadist. Must better fits for these terrorist loving schools
Farrakhan/Obama 2024!
https://youtu.be/jnkCfB3rd_Q
My question is this: why should the US Ambassador to the UN be a desirable commencement speaker? Why not get get Klaus Schwab? I have not problem with her being cancelled. I can only guess what nonsense she would spew.
Xavier University? Really?? God save us from Jesuits and jihadis. Their values are becoming indistinguishable.
Xavier University? Really?? God save us from Jesuits and jihadis (sic). Their values are becoming indistinguishable.
Wow. Just wow.
Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana is not Jesuit. It was founded by St Katherine Drexel who founded Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and People of Color which runs XU in NoLa.
A black friend of mine attended XU in NoLa, then Stanford Medical School, and now an excellent, data driven, compassionate HIV / Infectious Disease physician at a top 10 medical center in the USA. He recruited me to combine my Cardiology expertise with HIV and publish studies together.
Jesuits are not jihadists.
Estovir, the Jesuit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzaga_University
in Spokane is very good, despite a rocky beginning.
To my surprise, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley is a graduate, which simply ups my assessment of Gonzaga as a fine school.
Besides, it has a superb basketball team. 🙂
I stand corrected. I mistakenly thought the Professor was writing about Xavier University in Cincinnati. My bad for not reading more carefully.
My apologies to the Jesuits. I’m relieved this has nothing to do with them… Diogenes
Maybe they should substitute a screening of FANTASIA or SNOW WHITE for commencement. Seems that is about the all they can handle intellectually.
My commencement speaker in 1970 was Benjamin Mays who was the first African American president of the City of Atlanta School Board. I thought he was a good choice who had a lot to tell us about America achieving the best for all our people. Of course most of us students were more concerned with getting the commencement over and getting the pictures with our proud families and then getting out of those hot robes in the sweltering Georgia heat. There was another group who were now draft eligible and had a high chance of being in Viet Nam within a short time. Commencement for them was going to be life altering. Very different emotions depending on your group.
Respectfully, I am a free speech absolutist and lean towards Constitutional originalism. That said, everyone is missing the point about commencements, especially for the graduation classes of 2024. These students and their parents have endured enough nonsense. These are the enrollees who were forced to wear masks that were pure theater, be “vaccinated” with drugs that protected them from nothing and harmed many, endure “remote” classes & social iscolation. And now, once all the courses have been accomplished and the gautlet has been traversed the schools are inviting figures of controversy to give their commencement addresses. I do not care who they are or the side they favor – just STOP IT! These graduates deserve speakers who reflect an appreciation for blessings, thoughtful examination, grit, and hope. Give them their moment of joyful celebration WITHOUT CONTROVERSY!
Wait! What the —- does “absolutist” mean? Were the Founders and Framers not “absolutists?”
Americans enjoy the absolute freedom of speech.
Americans enjoy the absolute freedom of listening.
Or not listening.
If lies, fraud, conspiracy, and defamation were illegal, America would have no salesmen, elected or appointed officials, or politicians; Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Christopher Wray, Merrick Garland et al. would have been Drawn and Quartered long ago.
Alas. I do worry what will be left for my grandchildren
Does anyone still wonder why the Leftists want free college? K-12 isn’t enough time to full indoctrinate, the process is completed in “higher education.” It is truly time to stop this way before college years.
Free indoctrination would almost certainly be preferable than paying $80-90K a year for indoctrination from a hedge fund masquerading as a university.
Deutsches Jungvolk in der Hitlerjugend (The Hitler Youth and Young Folk) were radicalized youth who were indoctrinated with intolerance to opposing views to the Reich and with hatred of Jews. As they grew older and became of age, they would move into the army and to the SS. They would be the ones who would rip children from their mother’s arms in Auschwitz and other extermination camps. They would do the bloody bidding of their superiors. They would turn in their own family members if they expressed opposition.
The useful idiots who are led by the nose from the professional organizers, non student radicals and foreign activists do share some common values with the Nazis.
Universities giving the mob even one inch will have detrimental consequences both now and in the future. This is not an organic protest. It is a well funded propaganda campaign organized and directed by outside forces. It makes no sense and does not address the bloody atrocities of the terrorists.
👍
E.M.: Well said.
“. . . do share some common values with the Nazis.”
Here are two of those “common values:”
Determinism — You are your Aryan blood. You are your Palestinian blood.
Surrender your moral autonomy to Higher Authorities — whether the Nazis or the Mullahs.
Once inculcated from a young age, they become easy fodder for dictators.
For many, that is preferable to hearing from one of the world’s top diplomats at a time of global strife.
There is ignorant,
There is Stupid
The ignorant are uninformed. They lack information needed to form opinions. These or those covered by “ignorance is bliss”. It defines people that don’t know the topic,
Stupid, are the same, except they lack the mental capacity to learn new information.
The college students can charitably be ranked as ignorant, but by rioting to keep themselves ignorant, they slide into to stupid
It is clear all this stuff on campus is being fed by international communist/socialist, authoritarians. These student understand exactly zero about the conflicts they are rioting for. They are not operating on there own values, because they lack core values to start the analysis of information
Xavier University in NOLA is only an institution of higher learning in their minds; in reality, there are many high schools that are more challenging. It is actually a Democratic money laundering network where substandard students receive less than substandard education.
American education is simply a comprehensive, unconstitutional, anti-American, communist redistribution of wealth scheme for the benefit of teachers and professors unions and the base and abject proletariat.
Education is a solemn endeavor that can only be seriously pursued in the free markets of the private sector.
In a private circumstance, students must demonstrate merit and parents must provide financial support.
In a public circumstance, unqualified students may not be denied.
Fits perfectly into the mindset of today’s Left. I still have relatives and friends who are on the Left (yes, I admit it) and who would never dream of listening to Fox News and ridicule me because I do. [I also read the Economist, my local far-left newspaper, the online NYTimes, Yahoo news and the WSJ]. To sit and listen to any person to the right of Rachel Maddow or AOC is just unthinkable.
Partisanship doesn’t matter anymore. Corporations rule the planet. Ralph Nader was right in that regard.
Jonathan,
Let’s quit pretending these people are liberal.
Hear! Hear!
Why are free people making America less free?
Free is freedom to do what I want, not for you to do what you want.