BY HANK REICHMAN
Shortly after my most recent contribution to this blog, “On Commencement Speakers,” was posted, John Wilson offered the following comment in response:
I’ve never participated in a commencement and only attended one in my life, because I find them boring and silly. The commencement address is the only potential exception to this ridiculous ceremony, and it is usually a disappointment. I fully embrace the fact that I am weird, and most people in the audience want a commencement ceremony that is inoffensive, where they never hear a controversial idea. However, the same could be said of the university altogether: Most students and most of the public may want a university where people are trained for well-paid jobs and never hear an offensive idea. That is not what they should get. The university must stand for academic freedom and intellectual debate at all times, even when a popular vote would oppose it.
There is a fundamental difference between individual students or faculty protesting the beliefs of a speaker or the selection of an honorary degree recipient, and the actual enforcement of censorship by the administration. If we are ready to sacrifice the core values of a universities at its most legendary and well-attended non-athletic event, why do we believe those values will remain intact the rest of the time? Why would we trust administrators who denounce the slightest mention of politics at commencement due to public outrage to vigorously defend their students and faculty against similar blowback at other times?
The arguments against controversial commencements are really the same as the arguments against any offensive speech in the university: it’s inappropriate, it’s divisive, it alienates people and makes them feel unwelcome, it’s a distraction, it’s upsetting. We should reject censorship of commencements because we believe in the principle of free speech, and any exceptions to the rules can quickly become the new rules.
I agree . . . but only to a point. To be sure, students and faculty are free (collectively, and not only as individuals) to protest the selection or appearance of a commencement speaker, with the limitation that they should not prevent that person from speaking. And administrations should not retract invitations under pressure, although it would appear that more frequently protested speakers withdraw voluntarily, as was the case with both of this year’s examples recounted in my original post. (This may, of course, occasionally come in response to behind-the-scenes pressures by university officials, but that cannot be assumed without clear evidence.) Wilson is surely correct as well to mistrust the commitment to free expression of administrators “who denounce the slightest mention of politics at commencement due to public outrage.”
Wilson does not especially like commencement, which he calls a “ridiculous ceremony,” and to some extent neither do I, though I can’t say I find the event ridiculous. (If it were, would the issue of free speech even matter?) When I walked out of my own commencement fifty years ago I did so to protest, but to be frank I was also relieved to get out of there as I was bored and uncomfortable in the scorching mid-June sun. But twenty-five years of teaching at an institution whose students, majority minority, are most often the first in their families to attend, much less graduate from, college changed my view dramatically. For my former students commencement represented a major life passage, an event to be celebrated with family and friends. Sitting on stage while the graduates paraded up to receive their degrees could still feel tedious, and more than a few grads shared in that feeling as well, especially as it seemed the event always came on the most unusually hot day of the spring. Indeed, the most favored applause line uttered by most every commencement speaker almost always began with the welcome words “In conclusion . . .” Still, the significance and meaning of the ceremony to so many in attendance, their sheer joy and relish in their accomplishments and those of their family members and friends, their infectious optimism for the future, cannot be denied. This is what commencement is about and why in my original post I quoted one professor who celebrated how “the totality of the experience — especially visiting with the families of my students — returns me, without fail, to the optimistic and idealistic frame of mind that led me to be a teaching scholar in the first place.” Here too I most heartily agree.
And this is why I cannot fully agree with Wilson’s claim that colleges and universities “must stand for academic freedom and intellectual debate at all times” or in all places, at least in the same way. Colleges and universities host a wide variety of activities and events, of which commencement is but one, albeit in many ways a special one. And the same rules do not and cannot apply to all of these. A lecture on the molecular structure of DNA is entirely appropriate for a classroom or public talk, but hardly welcome at commencement. Protests or teach-ins on, say, the university’s treatment of its cafeteria workers, or in favor of or opposition to BDS, are appropriate in many places and at many times on campus, but not necessarily in the classroom. Debates of all sorts properly take place in classrooms, dorm rooms, and quads every day, but what college would decide to turn the commencement stage over to such an activity? A bonfire rally before the Big Game is also a university activity, but is free speech the issue here? And would such an activity be considered appropriate for commencement? In short, to use the language of the law, free speech on campus (which is distinct from academic freedom, if closely tied to it) may be subject to time, place, and manner restrictions.
Hence, there is nothing wrong with a university seeking to invite commencement speakers whose words or presence won’t needlessly antagonize a significant group of those attending. That is not censorship. Nor is it censorship for members of the university community to object when such considerations are ignored. This is why I agree with Keith Whittington that “playing it safe with anodyne speakers” at commencement may not reflect the university’s highest values, but disagree that this is necessarily a significant measure of the campus intellectual climate.
Wilson also neglects the fact that most commencement speakers are present, ostensibly, to receive an honorary degree. This is quite different from speakers invited by university departments, student organizations, or campus speaker series. The speaker is not simply invited to talk, but is honored. That is why when President Obama castigated Rutgers students for their protest the year before to Condoleezza Rice as a commencement speaker he was off the mark. The protests were not about her right to speak but against the university’s decision to honor her, a decision made particularly troublesome by the fact that it bypassed a standing campus committee on such honors.
According to the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, “The faculty sets the requirements for the degrees offered in course, determines when the requirements have been met, and authorizes the president and board to grant the degrees thus achieved.” This should also apply to honorary degrees as well and at a properly run institution a faculty committee — sometimes with student input — will make decisions on the awarding of such degrees. Those decisions should reflect the values of the institution and take into consideration the nature of the event at which the degree will be awarded.
Of course, mistakes are made. Comedian Bill Cosby was awarded around 70 honorary degrees before most of those degrees were later revoked following exposure of the serial sexual abuse to which he subjected dozens of women. But if a degree can be revoked retroactively, why cannot an offer of such a degree also be revoked upon the revelation of new information? I’m not saying that’s advisable, but in principle it should be just as possible as the revocation of an ordinary degree upon the discovery of, say, a graduate’s plagiarism.
In short, commencement ceremonies are specific events held at specific times with their own specific rules and expectations. To be sure, as my original post argued, it is never possible to exclude controversy or politics, nor should we necessarily desire to do so. And sometimes protests may be called for, just as sometimes administrations may need to stiffen their spines in response. But there is nothing wrong with a campus that seeks to avoid such responses by ensuring that those honored and speaking are deserving and welcomed by the graduates and their families, the real heroes of the day.
I think colleges shouldn’t engage in viewpoint discrimination, including a ban on commencement speakers with controversial ideas. You invite interesting people to speak, and then you let them speak. So NYU’s requirement for prior review of a commencement speech should be absolutely unacceptable, as is its declaration that controversial speakers should be forbidden. That is censorship. The criticism of a speaker for making political comments is less bad, but also, I think, contrary to the spirit of a university.
I believe the idea of a debate at commencement is an amazingly good one, and if I am ever offered the opportunity to give a commencement address (which is highly, highly unlikely), that would be the first approach I would propose.
A bonfire is not a space for intellectual activity, and not every space on campus at every time will be. But a commencement speech certainly is a space for intellectual activity: It is supposed to make people think. Saying that controversial ideas should be unacceptable in this particular intellectual space on campus is a dangerous idea, because once you say that one very important intellectual space on campus should ban controversy, it becomes much more likely to have it banned in other intellectual spaces. Sometimes the expression of controversial ideas (like any ideas) can be inappropriate or stupid or misguided. But the answer to that should not be a “no controversy” rule.
Commencement speech platforms, like offers of faculty positions, can be rightly revoked. But the standard should be gross misconduct or relevant criminal activity as judged by the faculty, not the “crime” of an offensive tweet or the fear that someone might have a terrible tendency to express controversial ideas. Commencement speakers should be chosen based on the merits of their work and the strength of their ideas, not based on their willingness to suppress controversy and placate an administration that seeks only happy thoughts and bland cliches. I am quite aware that the real world of college campuses is very different from my ideal. I don’t understand why my ideal is wrong.
NYU’s apparent prior review requirement for student valedictories is, I fully agree, abominable and infantilizing. I have not heard that it has been or will be applied to outside commencement speakers or to recipients of honorary degrees, nor do I suspect such a requirement can be found at other colleges and universities. If such exist, they’re improper and should be abandoned. Period.
I’m sure that John and I agree that commencement speeches should, as Joan Scott put it in an email to me, “embody principles and values that the educational experience was all about.” I wish that commencement ceremonies were more substantive and, well, academic. But “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” as a 17th-century Scottish proverb (and a recent song lyric by Blackberry Smoke) put it. These events are what they are. I don’t disagree with John’s ideal. But the reality differs. Indeed, at many, perhaps most, institutions commencement speeches are not spaces for intellectual activity, or at least not for very challenging intellectual activity. But the protests against commencement speakers almost always have little to do with what the speakers say, since they always actually precede the speech itself. Sometimes invitations are extended to inappropriate speakers — inappropriate in varying ways. And sometimes that elicits protest. But to consider such invitations and such protests as somehow exemplary of the intellectual climate and status of free speech on campus is a distortion. And that is my essential point. We have been told over and over that student challenges to commencement speakers represent a major assault on free speech. They do not. Period.