I can’t say I have much sympathy for E. L. Doctorow, who was nearly “booed off the stage” while giving a virulently anti-Bush commencement address at Hofstra University. Unless the university in question is itself overtly committed to a particular ideology (such as a religious university) commencement is simply not the time or place for an ideological speaker to take advantage of a captive audience.
At my own graduation from Brandeis, I had to sit through two left-wing rants posing as commencement addresses, one by a graduating senior, and the other by a rather well-known liberal activist. How strident was the activist’s speech? My parents tell me (I was with the graduates and couldn’t hear) that my grandfather, a lifelong liberal Democrat who started working for a living when he was in fifth grade, stood up in the middle of the speech and yelled “tell them to get a job,” to the great applause of the overwhelmingly liberal Jewish audience that surrounded him (it would have been amusing to see what would have happened if there had been a repeat performance at my much smaller Yale Law graduation in the law school courtyard– the activist had previously been a commencement speaker there as well). I actually don’t blame the activist, but the university itself, for choosing the activist as my commencement speaker. At least at the time, the activist was a popular choice for such events, and I have to assume that the powers-that-be knew what they were getting for their money, and the activist simply provided the belligerently left-wing speech they wanted. It’s among the many reasons why I don’t feel the least bit guilty about not responding to Brandeis’s entrieties for donations.
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