Commencement Speakers Parrot Liberal PC Orthodoxy

INSIGHT magazine ^ | June 24, 2002 | Marc Levin

[Stand Watch Listen]

As the graduation season draws to a close it is clear that, despite the massacres of Sept. 11, many colleges are more determined than ever before to send graduates into the world with divisive and politicized ceremonies, eschewing the themes of optimism and unity traditionally associated with commencements.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend is the advent of separate ceremonies for minority groups. While the blood shed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon was the same color for all who were murdered, many universities have decided that the best way to prepare their graduates for an increasingly diverse society is to hold segregated graduations.

The University of California at Santa Cruz held a special ceremony for more than 45 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. At Iowa State University, "Lavender Graduation" was held to honor gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. The University of Michigan also sponsors a separate homosexual graduation.

Other segregated ceremonies focus on race and ethnicity. This year, the University of Texas at Austin held a separate graduation event for racial and ethnic minorities that included African-American, Hispanic and American-Indian students, but excluded Asian Americans. Similarly, the California State Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo convenes a special ceremony only for black students.

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) attempts to cover all the bases, holding a "Lavender Graduation" for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, a "Raza Graduation" for Latinos, as well as separate graduations for Filipinos, Asian/Pacific Islanders, African Americans, Iranians and American Indians.

Even when graduations do not themselves promote divisiveness through separate minority ceremonies, left-wing commencement speakers often create discord by making egregious remarks. Perhaps the most offensive commencement address this year was delivered by professor bell hooks (sic), who rejects capitalization as an invalid social construct, at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

hooks stated, "The radical, dissident voices among you have learned here at Southwestern how to form communities of resistance that have helped you find your way in the midst of life-threatening conservatism, loneliness and the powerful forces of everyday fascism, which use the politics of exclusion and ostracism to maintain the status quo. Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people's spirits."

hooks declared, "Indeed, our nation's call for violence in the aftermath of 9/11 was an expression of widespread hopelessness, the cynicism that has been at the heart of our nation's ongoing fascination with death." She said that following Sept. 11, "Many Americans experienced for the first time a moment of clarity when they knew without a doubt that to choose life, we must stand against violence, we must choose peace. And yet that moment of collective clarity was soon obscured by the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hunger to show the planet our nation's force, to show that this nation would commit absolute acts of violence that will wipe out whole nations and worlds. The world was held spellbound by our government's declaration of its commitment to violence, to death."

At Smith College in Massachusetts, law professor Lani Guinier responded to President George W. Bush's joke at the Yale University commencement last year that he demonstrates even "C" students can be president. Guinier remarked, "You, too, can go on to be president, but only if you're a straight white man." Apparently, she is unaware of polls showing the vast majority of Americans would vote for a minority president, including specific surveys indicating that Colin Powell could have won the presidency in 2000.

While leftists such as hooks and Guinier who do not hold public office often are invited to give commencement speeches, a Young America's Foundation study shows conservatives who do not hold public office rarely are asked to speak. Even when conservatives do deliver commencement addresses, a protest almost always can be expected. For example, students protested Condoleezza Rice this year at Stanford University. Liberal students even denounced apolitical children's entertainer Fred Rogers, who spoke this year at Dartmouth University, his alma mater, because he is not "a human-rights activist."

When black soldiers fought valiantly for America beside whites in Korea, it helped inspire the great civil-rights movement of the 1960s. Similarly, Sept. 11 has revitalized similar feelings of patriotism and unity in American society. However, as the commencements of 2002 show, academia remains a bastion of political correctness that rejects the integrationist model of the original civil-rights movement and instead sows divisiveness and dissension into the hearts and minds of America's young people.

Marc Levin is vice president of the Texas Review Society, associate editor of the Austin Review and president of the American Freedom Center.

[Britton J Wingfield]

I recently had to take a course on diversity. I was very pleased that I could do a presentation on the single most colorblind society in the world, the U.S. Army.

It was great fun whacking liberals over the head with polls that show American soldiers to be more conservative and less racist that similar groups of university students.