On Protesting Commencement Speakers

The practice of protesting commencement speakers is nothing new, but rarely in recent memory have these protests been as widespread and as solicitous of public attention as they have been this spring.
It all started April 8, when administrators at Brandeis University, acting under pressure from undergraduates and faculty members, rescinded a commencement invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a noted women’s rights advocate and strident critic of Islam. To most students, the rescindment seemed prudent, and the original invitation almost inexplicable. Ali, after all, had called Islam a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death” in an interview with the London Evening Standard in 2007, and many of her statements continue to be overtly Islamphobic.
But the commencement rows that would follow in the coming weeks seemed far more frivolous, in that these protests were not based in opposition to personal bigotry, but rather in opposition to specific political policies that were not, on their face, tied to intolerance.
On May 4, for instance, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, facing student protest at Rutgers as a result of her involvement in the Iraq War and her approval of waterboarding war detainees, decided not to attend the school’s ceremony, as she feared that the contentious atmosphere surrounding her visit would subtract from the collegial atmosphere of graduation. Though she withdrew voluntarily, it was clear she felt intellectually bullied. “I am honored to have served my country,” she said on May 5. “I have defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas.”

Christine LaGarde, the current managing director of the IMF and a noted labor and antitrust lawyer before she entered the public sector, was the next commencement speaker to come under fire. Petitioners at Smith College, students and faculty alike, rallied to disinvite her, accusing the IMF of “imperialistic” policies, while conceding that LaGarde may herself be a “good person.” Soon LaGarde withdrew for the same reasons as Rice.
A few days later, students at Haverford pressured former University of California chancellor Robert C. Birgeneau into withdrawing from its commencement ceremonies because he initially supported the police response to a heated 2011 Occupy Berkeley incident. (The fact that he condemned the police and called for an immediate investigation after seeing video footage of the altercation a few days later meant little to the protestors.)
And, recently, a similar debate also penetrated Harvard’s campus: at the Graduate School of Education, petitioners attempted a putsch against Colorado State Senator Michael C. Johnston—who fortunately did speak at commencement—on the basis of his support for “test-based accountability” for teachers.
Among the commentariat, save in the most liberal journals, pundits and editorial boards have come down against these protesting students, describing their meta-movement as a harbinger of “rising liberal intolerance” on campus. And though student papers, including the Crimson, have defended the protests, it seems to me that the mainstream media is at least partially right. Birgeneau, who himself has a history of liberal, nonviolent protest, hardly seems like a controversial figure. Neither does LaGarde, who in many respects would be considered something of a lefty in Amercan political circles, even if the organization she now heads is associated with neoliberal economics. New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly treads more contentious ground, but the refusal of Brown students to let him speak at a forum and Q&A last semester—which is far from a commencement speech—struck many, including myself, as close-minded.
Those supporting these student protests frame the issue as one of free speech: they have a right, under this principle, to fight “speech with speech”—and their speech happens to take the form of protest. I wholeheartedly agree with this principle, but this argument misses the point.
Though we certainly have a right, and, at times, a responsibility to protest, the issue here is the effect of the protest, not the legitimacy of the method. And here the effect is too often sealing our campuses off from the policies that vocal students disagree with—limiting our politics to a very narrow kind of campus liberalism.
In the protestors’ defense, a commencement address is not just another forum on campus; the selected speaker should not denigrate a certain people or ethnicity during their speech, as graduates of all stripes should be able to attend without their personal dignity being called into question. That’s why I agree with Brandeis’ rejection of Hirsi Ali.
But specific policy disagreements—unless they are predicated on racist or overtly discriminatory sentiment—should not be a basis for disinvitation. Like most campus communities, our community is far too intellectually diverse to avoid this kind of conflict, and—as most students who’ve engaged in political debate with peers will attest—non-bigoted, intellectually rigorous arguments from the other side of the political spectrum are often the most informative, and almost always the most challenging.
For me, it feels strange to oppose student protest, as I appreciate and support the work of SLAM, SJSF, Divest and a number of other activist groups on campus. In other words, I mostly share the politics of the protestors I’m critiquing. But here I do have one profound disagreement: while a commencement speaker must be intellectually accomplished and adhere to basic principles of tolerance, he or she does not need to agree with my politics.