Posted on 05/03/2014 10:26:08 AM PDT by Scoutmaster
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has backed out of delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University following protests by some faculty and students over her role in the Iraq War.
Rice said in a statement Saturday that she informed Rutgers President Robert Barchi that she was declining the invitation to speak at the graduation. "Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families," Rice said. "Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time."
The school's board of governors had voted to pay $35,000 to the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony. Rutgers was also planning to bestow Rice with an honorary doctorate. But some students and faculty at New Jersey's flagship university had protested, staging sit-ins and saying Rice bore some responsibility for the Iraq War as a member of the Bush administration.
Barchi and other school leaders had resisted the calls to disinvite Rice, saying the university welcomes open discourse on controversial topics.
The news of Rice's decision came a day after Barchi spoke with students protesting Rice's planned speech and told them the board of governors would not rescind its invitation.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I will not validate the sites by identifying them, but more the overwhelming majority of 300+ commenters at more than one website (not DU) believe Rice should either (a) not have been asked to speak, or (b) publicly rejected post-invitation, on the grounds that she is a “war criminal.”
I can hardly see why Condoleza Rice should waste her vauable time with these ... pretentious idots.
If I were a student graduating I would stand and turn my back to all the speakers to show my displeasure over the leftwingers silencing speech they don’t like.
Making a principled stand to appear at a place like Rutgers University is like making a principled stand on behalf of tuberculosis.
The left is rotten and vengeful. They specialize in destroying good people. The ones they hate the most are minorities who won’t stay on the plantation.
She probably shouldn’t have accepted the invitation in the first place.
She wasn't the commencement speaker either. The student events group did give her $32,000 to give a talk, though.
If she had been commencement speaker, I'm not entirely sure she would have been worse than the run of Democrat politicians who usually fill that role.
This demonstrates that those who criticize Palin’s “State University” education are phonies. They won’t even listen to a woman who has been a Provost at Stanford if she is not a flaming liberal. The only thing that makes Fascists happy is total agreement with their agenda.
How do you oppose these people without acquiescing to them? Palin’s tactic is better than Rice’s. You get right in their face. You make fun of them and ridicule them just like they make fun of you. You can’t take a back seat to them. Breitbart said it best, you tell them to go to Hell. Palin wouldn’t quite phrase it that way.
We can keep backing away but they see that as victory and we can’t keep giving them victories.
Typical RINO coward
In truth you should know that only about 150 students ever protested this (out of 35,000) and many of them were Muslim.
There was another protest about a week before, attended by about 150 “people” (students, teachers, and outsiders). This issue has been simmering for a while, and of course the local press has been giving the crybaby camera whores oodles of attention and headlines. Many leftists professors have joined in as well. Letters to the editor have run both ways. Ms. Rice had no lack of supporters who said she was too good to speak at Rutgers.
I don’t see why the first black female Secretary of State needs to apologize to anyone for her accomplishments. Seems to me that the mob-rule agitators in this case are a handful of sore losers who still can’t get over the fact that Bush got elected, plus a small contingent of Muslims who got their butts kicked by a woman in the Middle East.
I should note that Snookie never spoke at commencement, but she was paid almost the same amount of money to speak at a student event of some kind, and she was chosen by the students.
Rutgers is despised by many of us locals for exactly this type of politically correct nonsense, and the ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money they waste on their lame-ass sports program and coaches. The head coach of the RU football team earns over a million bucks a year, and is by far the highest-paid state employee in NJ.
It would have been akin to casting pearls before swine anyway.
All about hating a black woman.
Ignorant, close-minded fools! Perhaps she is really too black and too intelligent for these asshats. An extremely talented, black woman who holds several degrees, has a successful resume of accomplishments, a classical pianist who grew up in the segregated deep South...
Maybe they could see if Miley is available for twerking...as they had Snooki 2 years ago, that appears to be what libs prefer: No-talent ignorant white trash.
I'd be more impressed if Condi refused to take money to speak at graduations.
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