Im finding the conversation about how everyone should be embracing divisive graduation speakers disturbing. Yes, academia is a place for dissenting and opinionated voices to be heard. I believe that thoroughly! (And those dissenting voices, as well as the voices of the majority, should be subjected to the same standards of rigor, science, philosophical inquiry, etc. as anything else in academia. That doesnt mean Intelligent design gets equal time with evolution unless it can present the same rigor, research, and substantiated data. I believe academia is about a certain process of inquiry, NOT a pre-determined set of conclusions.) HOWEVER... while academia is a place for divisive and dissenting points of view, GRADUATION is not. Graduation and commencement are about the entire graduating class moving forward into the rest of their lives. A graduation speaker should, in my opinion, be someone who can be broadly inspiring to the graduates. Inviting Condi Rice to a political science class? Completely appropriate. Inviting her to be commencement speaker? If youre a neoconservative who believes violence is the answer to everything, perhaps appropriate. But I find it distressingly naive to invite her and then be surprised that some graduating seniors—who indebted themselves for 20 years to earn a degree—dont want her as the voice that launches them into their careers. Furthermore, after a polarizing figure gives a speech, I suspect a lot of subsequent conversation will be about do you agree with XXX or how could XXX say YYY when XXX did ZZZ earlier in their career? That isnt what graduation day is about. Conversation should be the graduates and the future, not about the speaker. (Except insofar as the speaker gives a topic that engages the graduates to think about their own future.) tl;dr: commencement speeches should be about ALL graduates and should not be given by highly polarizing figures. Thats what the rest of academia is for.
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 21:35:15 +0000
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