Posted on 05/03/2014 5:33:49 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
May 3, 2014 8:11 AM EXCLUSIVE: Rice Withdraws from Rutgers Commencement By NRO Staff
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is withdrawing from the Rutgers commencement ceremony.
Her invitation by the school’s board of governors had sparked protests from faculty and students, and now Rice has decided not to speak to avoid creating a distraction.
In a statement to be released this morning, Rice says,
Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.
I am honored to have served my country. I have defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas. These values are essential to the health of our democracy. But that is not what is at issue here. As a Professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as it’s former Provost and Chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.
Good luck to the graduates and congratulations to the families, friends and loved ones who will gather to honor them.
Opposition to Rice had focused on her support for the Iraq war and Bush policies in the war on terror. Rutgers faculty at the New Brunswick campus approved a resolution calling for Rice to be disinvited, citing her role in the Bush administration’s alleged “effort to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction.”
Protesting students had occupied the office of the president the other day, with signs reading “No honors for war criminals” and “War criminals out.”
Rice’s withdrawal comes after protests of her invitation to speak at the University of Minnesota recently and her placement on the board of the file-sharing firm Dropbox. Other figures who run afoul of campus orthodoxy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Charles Murray, have been disinvited from speeches over the last few weeks.
In a statement when the controversy first erupted, Rutgers President Robert Barchi said, “We cannot protect free speech or academic freedom by denying others the right to an opposing view, or by excluding those with whom we may disagree. Free speech and academic freedom cannot be determined by any group. They cannot insist on consensus or popularity.”
Barchi had adopted a different tone this week: “I frankly wish from my point of view that this whole affair was not here right now because it’s distracting from what great things we’re doing as a university. … It does have us, for better or worse, right in the crosshairs right now.”
No longer.
That makes them BIG 13? 14? 16?
On Fox and Friends they said it was a few professors and about 50 students, mostly Muslim, protesting.
Racists!
Two can play this game.
She is a typical Bushie - no courage. She should have faced them down and torn their lies apart at commencement just like GWB did to the left on the “weapons of mass destruction” smear....oh, wait, he didn’t do that.
I guess one reason apart from AA that Bush put her in government was he could see a kindred spirit.
At university of Rochester in ny, they invited that special kind of moron, Chris Mathews for the commencement address. Not a peep out of the moron students.
I think there will be 14 teams in the Big Ten next year...
I’m a Rutgers grad and this sort of stuff is why I won’t ever donate any money to the school.
Dear Mr. Barchi:
I am writing this letter as someone who is hardly a fan of Condoleeza Rice. I think she was symptomatic of all the wrong things that transpired among the big-government globalists who infested the upper reaches of this government during the Bush administration. But it would seem to me that a professor from Stanford University and that institution's former Provost and Chief Academic Officer is precisely the kind of person you would want to have as a commencement speaker. Of all the "great things" you claim Rutgers has accomplished over the years, I would say that successfully securing a commencement speaker with Dr. Rice's credentials should be one of them.
If the quasi-humanoid mutants who managed to chase a successful African-American woman of Dr. Rice's stature away from your university's commencement ceremonies this spring, please rest assured that I will not be hiring any Rutgers University graduates anytime soon.
Sincerely,
Alberta's Child
Leftist hypocrite morons.
That said, Condi, you gotta do better on its versus it’s (assuming what you wrote is recorded accurately in the article).
Behold, further evidence of the constant lie of the left’s tolerance... as if any more evidence were necessary.
If you do not defend free speech you will not have it.
There are times that I am ashamed to be a college instructor, and this is one of them.
Nearly 30 years ago, during my freshman year at college, the graduating seniors asked Jeanne Kirkpatrick to be their commencement speaker. This was in 1986 and Mrs. Kirkpatrick by then had returned to teaching.
The college FACULTY protested her selection by refusing to confer on her an honorary doctorate, as is the custom. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was rightly insulted and declined the invitation.
As a consequence, Mrs. Kirkpatrick's friend and colleague in the Reagan administration, Bill Simon, withdrew from his alma mater his formerly considerable generosity and directed it where it would be better appreciated.
This is why the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration is located on the campus of the University of Rochester and not way down in Easton, Pa. on the campus of Lafayette College.
True story.
Perhaps no good deed goes unpunished.
Ding, ding, we have a winner!
We are in a war and Rice just raised the white flag of surrender to the anti-American left.
Rutgers has “tolerant” racist bigots.
A-MEN!
G.W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and the spokesidiot Dana Perino walked away from all the moral arguments for our action in the Middle East, and in doing so, left soldiers in the field and conservatives back home hanging in wind.
Between this and selling out his base for his attempts at amnesty, and caving in to the bailouts, the GW Bush administration was an absolute disaster for "conservatism".
BUT, the students and the parents said no way, that it was THEIR day and THEY were paying for the hall, and they weren't having that woman stand in front of them promoting herself on their dime. So she is out.
Probably too late to make a deal, but it would be great to see the Kansans' ask for Condi and have her accept the invitation.
She is not the ideal conservative, but if you want someone to stand before the group and extol the best virtues of the academic mission, she has it in spades.
“Those kids are $120,000 in debt..”
—
How on earth could you know that?
.
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