shame on RU and Smith

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/15/smith-and-rutgers-women-your-loss/

I'm a rutgers alum, and while they've certainly had more than their share of embarrassing missteps recently, this wasn't one of them. Rice was set to speak; some students protested as they have the right to do; she apparently didn't like the heat and withdrew. RU never disinvited her, so how/why is there shame on the school and what should they have done differently?

Thoughts on the "anti-liberal left":

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5713912/why-are-students-forcing-out-commencement-speakers

The left is always and inherently anti-liberal. Even if they call themselves liberal. The left is all about control.

Boy, you read that interview fast.

The university did not disinvite her, but the faculty made it quite clear that she was not welcome; a pretty small number of students cared much either way. This was a faculty-driven campaign, fighting the intellectual war of a decade ago.

It is especially interesting that the faculty opposed Rice on moral grounds. Prof. Rudy Bell (Dept. of History) said in interviews that it would be immoral to have Rice address the students in the context of commencement because this would not foster the growth that the university seeks to impart to its students. Pretty high opinion of (a) the power of academia and (b) the extent to which graduates actually listen to commencement addresses.

Rice is a war criminal. Thousands of Americans are dead, and untold numbers of Iraqis were killed or forced to flee.

I don't want her speaking at a university that is supported on my tax dime.

knowlton said:

Rice is a war criminal. Thousands of Americans are dead, and untold numbers of Iraqis were killed or forced to flee.

I don't want her speaking at a university that is supported on my tax dime.

..........and you have every right to express your displeasure. If such protests make Rice uncomfortable, tough luck for her. She has no inherent right to earn a 5-figure reward for giving a commencement speech.

Ick. I'm glad she's not speaking in NJ.

Outside of GOP bastions, say in South Carolina or Wyoming or deep in the heart of Texas, everyone from the Dubya administration is pretty toxic so this brouhaha is not a surprise.
The students (and faculty) were engaged on the issue and made their voices heard, which is a lot better than being apathetic.
So in my view there's no "shame" on RU whatsoever, still waiting for OP to explain otherwise.

God forbid anyone ever listen to anyone they do not agree with. Hey I subject myself to listening to all the statist leftists here. But they need to work hard to keep people in a bubble of their creation.

The objections are phrased in the context of conferring an honor, not merely listening to a speech.

It would help the level of discourse to keep that in mind, instead of rattling off mindless hyberbole like "the left are the real intolerant" or other such nonsense.

Following that logic then no school should confer an honor on anyone or ask anyone to speak since everyone is objectionable to someone.

And because uni students have a long history of protesting various things and people, including campus speakers, there is shame on every university in the land,

nohero said:

The objections are phrased in the context of conferring an honor, not merely listening to a speech.

It would help the level of discourse to keep that in mind, instead of rattling off mindless hyberbole like "the left are the real intolerant" or other such nonsense.

That is a good clarification. However, how does a university decides whom it should honor? The small group of people who originally chose Rice--and I am surprised they ever did--officially did so because she was an African American woman who rose from a place of hardship to attain a position of power. This fits with one of Rutgers's key specialties: women's history. But it doesn't fit with the criticisms of what she did in that position, which RU should have expected. So the faculty took it upon themselves to become the voice of "morality," which I still haven't been able to define besides what it opposes.

This presumes that there is some kind of objective truth that the faculty were upholding. But how do they derive that truth?

Baron, it was some members of the faculty, it wasn't "the faculty" as you describe.

Student_Council said:

Baron, it was some members of the faculty, it wasn't "the faculty" as you describe.

True. But the loudest ones, who led an organized campaign against her. They may not have actually spoken for everyone, but the majority wins, etc etc.

Ms. Rice made the decision, not the University.

Are you suggesting that the University should have forced these faculty to be silent to prevent the possibility of Ms. Rice withdrawing?

A commencement speech is not an opportunity for an exchange of ideas. It is a highly paid opportunity for elite speakers who are being held up as a model for the graduating students.

Invite Rice to a class or a debate forum or anywhere else where ideas can be exchanged and debated. But don't pay her thousands of dollars for the honor of speaking to our graduates.

sprout said:

Ms. Rice made the decision, not the University.

Are you suggesting that the University should have forced these faculty to be silent to prevent the possibility of Ms. Rice withdrawing?

I don't think the University should force anybody to be silent, and it did not. I don't have a problem with the facts of how any of this settled. In a certain way it was a good dialogue where nobody was forced to do anything. Rice backed out, end of that story.

But it is not the end of the bigger story about how universities make the selection of, as mjh says, one who is "being held up as a model." Who defines that model? In this case there was a huge disagreement between administrators and what I'll just call "leading faculty." Each claimed to define that model better than the other.

Point is: a public, state university simultaneously claims to be a forum for free discussion and also the provider of a "model" of how to... behave? Think? Can these two claims coexist?

mjh said:

It is a highly paid opportunity for elite speakers who are being held up as a model for the graduating students.

Kind of harks back to the Amiri Baraka discussion. To me, presenting someone as a public figure whose views are noteworthy (Ahmadinejad at Columbia, for example)* is not necessarily the same thing as holding him or her up to be a model.

*ETA: Wasn't a commencement speaker, so the analogy is off. But, personally, I still don't think a commencement speech automatically implies "model."

Another idea that I saw mentioned in some quarters after all this went down:

Maybe universities should just quit giving out honorary degrees.

Maybe the universities should scrap Commencement ceremonies.

No trigger alert issues anymore.

Does anyone take honorary degrees seriously?

mapletree said:

Does anyone take honorary degrees seriously?

That was cited as the real problem by the opposing faculty, but maybe they don't really care, either.

Honorary to me has always meant nothing more than the fact that the person receiving it has not earned it in the classroom.

And honorary degrees are not granted only at commencement ceremonies.

RU should never have invited her to receive an honor. if she wants to come to New Brunswick and speak about her role in the Bush Administration, and answer real questions from faculty and students, wonderful.

but to air brush out her instrumental role in the death of hundreds of thousands, and the misery of millions, and give her an award? appalling. I'm glad someone at RU spoke up.

Omg

DaveSchmidt said:

mjh said:

It is a highly paid opportunity for elite speakers who are being held up as a model for the graduating students.

Kind of harks back to the Amiri Baraka discussion. To me, presenting someone as a public figure whose views are noteworthy (Ahmadinejad at Columbia, for example)* is not necessarily the same thing as holding him or her up to be a model.

*ETA: Wasn't a commencement speaker, so the analogy is off. But, personally, I still don't think a commencement speech automatically implies "model."

If does not. And if one takes ten seconds on the Google one could probably find hundreds of speakers who many would find far below that oddly nondescriptive bar.

While personally I would not want to hear Rice speak, I can understand why she was invited, particularly given that she has academic credentials (provost at Stanford) as well as being someone from a limited environment who became a world figure. That's a big story in higher ed, giving people access and opportunity, and she's an example of that.

That said, both sides (school and Rice) should have anticipated the controversy and protests (and perhaps they did), and they could have done better than ex-Gov. Kean in finding the replacement.

I assume there was no referendum as to whether Rice should have been invited so there is no objective determination as to the consensus on campus. There is a widening gulf between the faculty and administration at many institutions which taints decisions such as commencement speakers and I have reason to believe this exists at Rutgers. Often, such debates are less about the speaker than about who was consulted. And, anyone who still embraces the illusion that there is a free exchange and consideration of ideas on the average (of course, there are exceptions) college and university campus is ill informed. There is little tolerance for points of view that conflict with one's own, largely based on the premise that to afford someone a pulpit is to legitimize their perspective. I see this played out daily among students, faculty and administration and from both sides of the political/philosophical aisle.

Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak last year or the year before. She could not do it then due to a conflict. So they postponed. No reason to "honor" the agreement on the part of RU one year later.

A multi-talented person ( piano, skating, academics). She enrolled in college at the age of 15. She did her PhD on the Soviet Union. She could probably give some advice to Kerry.

And one of her playmates was killed with three other little girls when the famous bombing of the church in Birmingham happened. She knows a few things about life's tragedies too.