Posted on 06/04/2002 9:13:38 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Goldie Hawn — actress, social activist, mom and college dropout. And now, commencement speaker. The same can be said of Johnny Moseley, an Olympic skier and gold medalist who was invited to give the commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley. Moseley was as surprised as his audience by his newfound academic credibility, joking that the last time he heard from Berkeley it was from the admissions department in a letter that began, "Dear Mr. Moseley, we regret to inform you. …" He then asked his dumbfounded audience, "Does that mean that Maya Angelou is going to speak at the X Games?"
Moseley and Hawn are typical of this year's commencement speakers. According to Insight's annual review of graduation homilists, the 2002 list of speakers is both less political and less serious than in previous years. However, one trend remains constant: liberal speakers outnumber conservative ones.
Before the likes of Hawn, Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg donned academic robes at the end of the year, serious speeches usually were the expectation rather than the exception. In 1963 at American University in Washington (where Hawn delivered the main speech this year) President John F. Kennedy used the commencement platform to deliver a major policy address. As Bob Dylan might have said: The times they are a-changin'.
For example, this year Hawn warmed up the crowd with statements such as, "Now is the time for you to go to the college of You." Thirty-nine years ago Kennedy avoided the solipsistic in favor of a broader worldview, vowing to work for "not merely peace in our time but peace for all time." By contrast Hawn's advice could have been lifted from a local yoga instructor: "Find out who you are, what you think. Learn to listen to the sounds of your own heart."
Shelves of books have been written to debunk Kennedy's bleatings about peace at the height of the Cold War, with some scholars having found his rejection of a "Pax Americana [to] enforce [peace] on the world by American weapons of war" particularly quaint. But few would question the weighty intentions of that address.
Does the increased appearance of actors, comedians and pop celebrities represent a lamentable decline in the standards of graduation speeches? After all, Winston Churchill's inimitable phrase about an "iron curtain" falling over Europe was uttered at a graduation ceremony at obscure Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., in 1946. Students were listening — and so, evidently, was the world. Are today's orators playing to an undergraduate subculture instead of speaking from experience to the future?
"Over time, speakers have tried to put themselves more and more in the shoes of the people who graduate and realize that none of them really remember what's being said," writes Peter J. Smith, an editor of a compilation of commencement speeches, in the Washington Post.
But light and fluffy speeches aren't necessarily an unfortunate development, says Jerry Martin of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. "It's perfectly fine that, instead of a dreary message, you listen to someone who was successful in athletics or entertainment give an uplifting or even humorous talk to celebrate the day. It's a celebration," says Martin. In fact, the more serious speeches tend to be more overtly political, drifting leftward along the way.
Even within the pool of lighter speakers few, if any, can be called conservative. Martin recalls one period at Emory University in Atlanta when "they had more communists than they did Republicans."
Indeed, according to a review by Young America's Foundation (YAF), a conservative group based in Herndon, Va., "Commencement speakers at the nation's most elite schools are weighted to the left." In previous years, the preponderance of overtly political speakers could, in part, be explained away by the occupant of the White House as prominent Democratic politicians, plucked from the Clinton administration, made for interesting speakers.
However, with George W. Bush in the White House, his Cabinet secretaries have not been A-list commencement commodities, giving credibility to the charge that the liberal elite schools continue to be expert at the politics of excluding conservatives. "For the ninth consecutive year our most prestigious schools excluded scholars such as Milton Friedman, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Thomas Sowell for the likes of such left-wing activists as Morris Dees, Lani Guinier, Madeleine Albright and Whoopi Goldberg. College administrators are using commencement ceremonies to send their students off with one more predictable leftist lecture," says Ron Robinson, president of YAF.
Insight's own annual review of speakers at U.S. News and World Report's list of top-25 colleges found that four prominent Republicans and four prominent Democrats were selected to deliver speeches. Last year's tally was 13 prominent Democrats to three prominent Republicans. But as Steven Balch of the National Association of Scholars points out, all of the invited Republicans this year are associated with 9/11. New York Gov. George Pataki spoke at his alma mater, Yale, while former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani addressed the law-school graduates at Georgetown and undergrads at Syracuse. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was invited back to speak at Stanford University, where she was provost prior to leaving for Washington to serve the president as director of national security. And Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge spoke at Carnegie Mellon Institute in his native Pennsylvania.
By contrast, the Democrats who made the commencement rounds were partisans one and all. House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi of California spoke at Georgetown. Former secretary of labor and current Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Robert Reich was invited to the well-respected Grinnell College in Iowa (a state also known for its influential presidential caucus) because he is "considered, by some, as the most effective labor secretary in recent years," claims a university spokesman.
While Harvard called upon Democratic former senator and erstwhile Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan to be commencement speaker, the Harvard seniors picked Al Franken, the liberal comedian and author of such literary wonderments as Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations and Why Not Me?: The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency, to deliver its class address.
Other comedians also found invites slipped under their doors. Cosby topped the list with speaking engagements at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, Rice University in Houston and Drew University in New Jersey. And Whoopi Goldberg gave an airy speech at America's most prestigious women's institution, Wellesley College, where a young Hillary Rodham addressed her classmates in 1969, speaking her mind on some of the "inarticulate, maybe even inarticulable, things that we're feeling."
Over at Smith College, the largest of the prestigious women's colleges, disgraced Clinton attorney-general nominee Lani Guinier gave the address while honorary degrees were bestowed upon Anita Hill, an obscure law professor whose single claim to celebrity is her infamously uncorroborated claim of sexism against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Katha Pollitt, a writer for The Nation, a house organ of the rearguard left.
After exhorting the graduates "to be lifelong learners, not just lifelong earners," Hill struck a self-pitying note about her disappointment in the failed effort to block a black conservative from the high court in 1993. Nor did she miss the opportunity to provide a plug for her latest book: The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy.
"Every year university administrators show their love for media personalities and entertainers, especially when they promote liberal causes," says Robinson of YAF. For example, Danny Glover, another movie star, social activist and the 1998 goodwill ambassador of the U.N. Development Program, delivered the baccalaureate at Cornell University. In his own student days, he joined the Black Panthers, a group not known for its surfeit of goodwill.
While universities differ widely in the ways in which they choose these speakers, there's some evidence to suggest that students attempted to select more conservative speakers this year as campus attitudes drifted away from liberal orthodoxy in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Though it acts in a shroud of secrecy, there were rumors that the Berkeley speaker committee wanted to invite Vice President Dick Cheney but worried about potential protests. There also were some fears that the vice president might decline an invitation to the famously radial campus. In the end, the Berkeley committee settled on Moseley, a man better known for hitting the bumps than hitting the books. His selection lit its own fuse of protest among students who didn't think the mogul master was sufficiently cerebral.
While seriousness wasn't on the agenda everywhere, other speakers made high-minded efforts. Countering Cosby's three humorous monologues, Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum also completed a commencement triple crown, speaking at Willamette University in Oregon, Ripon College in Wisconsin and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. "I'm always very serious in the speeches I give," Nussbaum assures Insight. She dismisses charges that the academy leans left and says she sees "plenty of leading Republicans coming to speak," but admits her view is not the dominant one.
Even Stanley Fish, a prominent apostle of postmodernism in the American academy, concedes that liberals stifle debate. In his latest work, The Trouble with Principle, Fish notes that "the vocabulary of academic freedom (or at least the vocabulary of its pious champions) is a sham and a cheat." Indeed, he writes, "Liberal neutrality and multiculturalism are both engines of exclusion trying to fly under inclusive banners."
While Fish long has been detested by the dyspeptic right, his old friends on the old left are turning on him. But Fish assumes a decidedly blasé attitude when discussing his ability to offend: "I've made a nice career in recent years by writing books or essays with titles like, 'There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too.' I wouldn't have been able to make a strong point were complacency not so well-established."
One element of this complacency, says Fish, is a general acceptance of the piety of the multicultural left. "The left, especially the multicultural left in the academy, thinks of its job as rooting out instances of discrimination and exclusion," Fish told the Sydney Morning Herald in May.
As might be expected, Fish was not invited to make a graduation speech anywhere this year. Other academics, such as Brown University President Ruth Simmons and Nussbaum, made the rounds. With sitting left-wing Cabinet secretaries in short supply, universities drew more heavily from the sloughs of journalistic despond and broadcast celebrity. For example, NBC's Tim Russert, once a Democratic aide, spoke at Notre Dame. While Fred McFeely Rogers (a.k.a. Mr. Rogers) can't be called a newscaster, it probably was his friendly demeanor and apolitical persona that drew him Dartmouth honors. PBS' Jim Lehrer spoke at the University of Pennsylvania, confirming the grumps of political conservatives that his NewsHour program is like the rest of public broadcasting: partisan and ideological.
"Where are all the conservative journalists?" asks Balch. "Has Bill Safire been invited anywhere? How about George Will?" Actually, Safire made the scene at the Tulane graduation in the Louisiana Superdome, where he was the first conservative to address the graduates in many years. Previous speakers included Tom Brokaw, Walter Isaacson, Cokie Roberts, Janet Reno, Art Buchwald, Thomas Foley, Vernon Jordan and Ralph Nader.
Aside from Safire and the thin assortment of Bush officials asked to speak this year, the only other vaguely conservative speaker to make an appearance was novelist Tom Wolfe. But, even in his address at Duke, Wolfe played to the crowd, ingratiating himself with a recitation of his knowledge of Duke basketball and campus politics.
"Duke may be feeling the heat to invite more conservatives," suggests Martin. It's too early to tell, he cautions, but we may be witnessing "a small trend toward an atmosphere that's more solicitous of a variety of viewpoints."
Hans S. Nichols is a reporter for Insight.
Deus Vult! 'Pod
all of the invited Republicans this year are associated with 9/11. George Pataki… Rudy Giuliani… Condoleezza Rice… Tom Ridge…
All are also pro-choice, if I’m not mistaken.
Not a lot of diversity welcome at the university on that issue.
the Harvard seniors picked Al Franken, the liberal comedian
The Harvard seniors deserve Al Franken, the liberal comedian.
Al Gore types (stiffs) have fallen from grace. Bush types (friendly, warm) are "in."
We must respect both our philosophers and our plumbers--Nowadays our "philosophers" constitute the complaining class:otherwise neither our theories or our pipes will hold water.
JournalistsOur "plumbers" are those who make the farms, businesses, and so forth work. Republicans respect our plumbers and, grudgingly at times, also our philosophers. Democrats respect our philosophers almost to the exclusion of the plumbers.
Plaintiff lawyers
College professors
Grade school teachers
Union leaders
"Reparations" advocates
Liberal politicians.
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