Posted on 05/20/2006 2:26:25 PM PDT by SandRat
NEW YORK -- Arizona Sen. John McCain received a cantankerous reception during his appearance at the New School commencement Friday, where dozens of faculty members and students turned their backs and raised signs in protest and a distinguished student speaker pointedly mocked him as he sat silently nearby.
The historically liberal university has been roiled in controversy in recent weeks over the selection of McCain, a conservative Republican and likely 2008 presidential candidate, to deliver the commencement address.
Some 1,200 students and faculty signed petitions asking the university president, former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, to rescind the invitation. Petitioners said McCain's support for the Iraq war and opposition to gay rights and legal abortion do not keep with the prevailing views on campus.
Kerrey, a Democrat who served in the Senate with McCain and, like McCain, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, addressed the controversy almost immediately after the 2,700 graduates and thousands of other parents and friends filed into Madison Square Garden for the ceremony.
"Sen. McCain, you have much to teach us," Kerrey said to a smattering of boos and hisses. He urged students to exercise the open-mindedness he said was at the heart of the university's progressive history.
But Kerrey's remarks were immediately overshadowed by those of Jean Sara Rohe, one of two distinguished seniors invited by the university's deans to address the graduates.
Beginning by singing a wistful folk tune calling for world peace, Rohe announced she had thrown out her prepared remarks to address the McCain controversy directly.
"The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded," Rohe proclaimed to loud cheers, with McCain sitting just a few feet away.
She added that she knew what McCain would be saying to the graduates since he had promised to deliver the same speech he gave at Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University last weekend and Columbia University on Tuesday.
"He will tell us we are young and too naive to have valid opinions," Rohe said. "I am young and though I don't possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."
Indeed, it was McCain's decision to address Liberty that set off the protests at the New School during the past several weeks.
Known for his maverick streak, McCain as a 2000 presidential candidate famously called Falwell one of the "agents of intolerance" hurting the Republican party. But recently, as McCain has begun laying the groundwork for another White House bid, he has sought to shore up his conservative credentials.
McCain later thanked Rohe for her "Cliff's notes" version of his speech, and then, as expected, delivered remarks that were nearly identical to his earlier appearances.
He reaffirmed his support for the Iraq war but urged debate and dissent. And he repeated the theme of youthful self-assuredness mocked just moments before by Rohe.
"When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed and wiser than anyone else I knew," McCain said. He added that he would have been right at home in the opinionated world of blogs.
As he spoke, several dozen students and faculty turned their backs to him and lifted signs saying "Our commencement is not your platform."
A few students yelled catcalls at McCain, saying things like "full of it," and "We're graduating, not voting."
Kerrey later retook the stage to praise McCain and Rohe's speeches as "two acts of bravery," while suggesting the hecklers weren't nearly as courageous as those who took the stage.
"Will you stand and say what you believe when you know that heckling and loudness and boos will arise?" Kerrey asked.
McCain's top political adviser, John Weaver, said the protests were "not unexpected." But he dismissed suggestions that the specter of liberal New York college students heckling McCain would enhance the senator's standing among conservative voters.
"It's not uncommon on a liberal campus that free speech is a theory in the classroom only," Weaver said.
A belated college education ping.
Let JamesP81, Jalisco555, or me know if you want on or off the college education ping list.
Ah, to heck with the students. My focus is on McCain.
You can just hear some "consultant" saying "first you give the speech at Liberty, then you give the same speech at New School; it'll show that John McCain takes on the right and the left!"
Oops!
McCain continues to disappoint. I know he was in the Navy and served with distinction, but must he constantly check the air for wind direction?
Hardly. No. Absolutely not. If this guy is the best the pubs can offer I'll just go to the park on v-day and feed the pigeons. They're more worthy of my vote, and I hate pigeons.
Speaking of pigeons, that's what this administration thinks I am. They're wrong.
Both parties have left me no choice other than not to choose at all. I see little difference between them. They like it that way, since they're both for big gubbmint and shredding the Constitution. The whole bunch can KMA because I'm not going for the same old choice of the "lesser of two evils".
FMCDH(BITS)
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