Forum for free speech (re:Rockford College Commencement)

[ouizy]

I had heard about this story yesterday and am absolutely appalled by what Rockford College did, and moreover what New York Times' Chris Hedges did. Basically the college had Hedges give this year's commencement speech and what he did was stand there and give an anti-war talk in front of a student body who protested him. Many of the students protested by turning their back on the speaker, but you can hear many of them passionately pleading for him to stop speaking and get off the stage (amongst all the boos.) Before I go on here is the link to the audio file of the speech:

http://www.rrstar.com/localnews/your_community/rockford/rcaudio.shtml

I believe a commencement speech has its appropriate place in the ceremony of graduation, however I also believe some of these colleges have skewed why the speech is given, and therefore who they select each year to give the speech. I believe the speech should be a positive, uplifting speech celebrating the students of the institution as they (in most cases) just spent the past four years of their lives busting their asses to earn a college degree (something many many people do not have the opportunity to receive.) The speech should emphasize how the students are about to enter the 'real world' and what kind of difference they can make once they are out there. The speech should talk of achievement, goals, and how to better the earth. Basically, I believe it should make the students feel good about what they have just accomplished, and get them excited for what lies ahead of them.

However, there is a trend these days for schools to basically hire speakers that are controversial for the sake of controversy. I am a huge proponent of the first amendment, and I believe everyone should have the right of free speech, but I do not believe a college graduation ceremony is the appropriate forum. The students (in most cases) just paid thousands and thousands of dollars to attend a university to attain a degree. Who do these universities think they are to hire someone to speak and anger the students who should be proud to be graduating from their university?

The graduation podium should not be a place for someone to stand and give a totally unrelated tirade about his opinions on war and say nothing, nothing to or about the students graduating from the institution that hired him to speak inthe first place. It is a disgrace. It would be a disgrace no matter how you feel about the war - whether you are for or against it, neither opinion matters. This is not the opportunity for you to stand and give your opinion about anything. It is, however, your job to give an inspiring speech and one that is positive in nature.

In my own life I have experienced this. At my graduation, a woman was hired to speak who was a female Asian writer who had written some books about Vietnam and was reknowned in some small literary circles. She did have some inspiring thoughts on how to live your life and be a good person in this world of evil, but a lot of her speech had to do with her life in Vietnam and war and peace. This is all well and good except I graduated during peacetime when there were no major conflicts in the world. It was also well and good except for the fact that I was an engineering student and most of her speech was about literature and the liberal arts (things I did not and do not much have a great interest in.) So the question is how appropriate a speaker was she for me, or many of my commrades in the engineering school. Not much. I joked that I would have rather had Bill Cosby speak (he spoke that year at another school) as he made a very inspirational speech, more a plea to the students to make this a better world. That to me is a good speech, he had no motive, and was not trying to put his interest ahead of the students whom should be celebrated.

I do not know why this has made me so mad, but after hearing that speech today the Rockford College administration should put forth a formal apology to its student body and it should truly be ashamed of itself. Had I been graduating from that school this year a lot would have had to be done to stop me from jumping on that stage and physically removing the speaker in the interest of the student body. They did manage to cut off his mike twice, but the administration allowed him to go on. It truly is a sad story as it has made many of the graduating class mad or upset, and their graduation day should be the last day to bring about these feelings. They should feel proud for what they accomplished, excited for waht is ahead, but rather their college decided to bring them down.

Shame.

 

[BVS]

I've been to two really horrible commecement speeches. Both were in the 98-99 time slot. One was Al Gore at the Naval Academy he had everyone in a deep sleep, and the other was George W. at Texas A&M. Now George's was entertaining just to hear what words he'd fumble or make up and see him stumble through his speech. But both were filled with campaign agenda. None left the students ready to change the world or motivated. Niether one of these jokers got my vote in that election, partly due to their lack of respect to those two audiences.

 

[pax]

At Ouizy's request I am moving this to regular FYM.

 

[STING2]

Chris, the 60s are over.

 

[U2Bama]

I think that quite often the faculty, administration, and elite students who select these cool cats as speakers do so in one final attempt to impose their controversial agendae on the greduating students before the escape the ideological control of the institution and jump into the real world.

~U2Alabama

 

[sulawesigirl4]

I for one would hope that the students would have enough maturity to allow for differing views of opinion and free speech rather than mob rule. Apparently their college education did not prepare them for the fact that in the real world they may have to listen to people with ideas that may contradict their own. What a shame.

 

[hiphop]

Ouizy, I think you are right in saying it was an inappropriate theme/ speech for that moment. But I also think it is ridiculous to turn your back on a speaker or boo around at such a speech, especially for graduated college students. They should have learned how to display a little more style.

 

[80sU2isBest]

I for one would hope that the students would have enough maturity to allow for differing views of opinion and free speech rather than mob rule. Apparently their college education did not prepare them for the fact that in the real world they may have to listen to people with ideas that may contradict their own. What a shame.

Shame on the speaker for not having the class to deliver a graduation speech (it was a graduation ceremony after all), but instead talked about a divisive issue that he had to know would create this kind of reaction.

 

[eardrumbuzz]

isn't this guy a war corespondent, a reporter? do you think his bias displayed in his speech impacted his reporting in afghanistan, or Iraq?

 

[hiphop]

that he had to know would create this kind of reaction.

How could he know that the graduates would act like 10 year olds?

 

[STING2]

whenhiphopdrovethebigcars,


"How could he know that the graduates would act like 10 year olds?"

Lets see, this is the STUDENTS graduation ceremony, not his or the faculty. This is a celebration of the hard work accomplishments that students have been in engaged in over the past several years. Many people were rightfully offended by the topic and tone of the speaker. Why should students and their families at THEIR graduation ceremony be forced to indure such a divisive speach, a speach that was extremely offensive to most of the students and their families. This was not a campus event where the speaker had come in to talk about the war, this was a graduation ceremony.

It probably would have been more appropriate to simply walk out. But I wonder how many Anti-War protesters at any Anti-War rally would have sat without saying a word, if Donald Rumsfeld got up to speak his views at their rally.

 

[hiphop]

That?s exactly what I am talking about, STING2.

There is a huge difference: between a rally, whether it is pro war, anti war, or any other kind of demo, where anyone is free to turn in whatever direction or to boo around - and a students graduation ceremony, which is a ceremony.

In my eyes, this is a formal ceremony, and it is totally without style and very childish to boo around at a formal ceremony. In my opinion, the graduates of a college have to be intelligent enough to react in a different way.

In fact, it would have been more appropriate to walk out without a word, or to simply listen to what this man has to say, also if it doesn?t fit in the ceremony, and at the following party (if there is any in such occasions) to talk about the taste or opinion of the speaker in small circles with glasses of champagne.

The students simply have shown that they haven?t learned good manners. Or any manners at all. Any hooligan at a soccer game can boo around. I can tell you that if something like this happens at a formal ceremony in Europe, nobody will think that those students are academically educated.

So, shame on them.

 

[U2Bama]

What if a college had a conservative figure speak at a commencement, and he/she went off on some tangent in favor of the death penalty or increased military spending, or opposed to foreign aid or abortion or multiculturalism? Would you want the liberal students who have a conscience to behave?

~U2Alabama

 

[sulawesigirl4]

I would expect them to utilise their conscience and respect the speakers right to his or her opinion and behave like an adult.

 

[beegee]

this is that liberal crap that makes me so irritated. if the speaker had the right do do and say as he pleased, so do the students. it's always one-sided. "we have the right do do and say as we please, but you don't have the right to disagree." whether the students had "style" or not is not the issue. the issue is that it was wrong of the speaker to use an inappropriate forum to air his personal views.

 

[hiphop]

What if a college had a conservative figure speak at a commencement, and he/she went off on some tangent in favor of the death penalty or increased military spending, or opposed to foreign aid or abortion or multiculturalism? Would you want the liberal students who have a conscience to behave?

~U2Alabama

Yes.

Because it was a formal ceremony, and not a rally or demo.

 

[hiphop]

I would expect them to utilise their conscience and respect the speakers right to his or her opinion and behave like an adult.

They neither had to respect the speaker or the right to his own opinion. It would be nice, but I don?t expect that. They should just have behaved like adults!

There is a difference in saying what you believe and booing. Booing is not a clear statement. Style is an issue at a formal ceremony, in my opinion.

Like I said, U2Bama, I would also have expected it the other way ?round. If there had been a conservative speaker, I would expect the liberal students to either keep their mouth shut and discuss about it later, or if they can?t bear that extreme attack on their poor little liberal hearts, to get up and walk out of the room.

In that formal ceremony, the speaker was officially authorized to speak about his views. The students were not.

 

[STING2]

bonosgirl84,

I think you hit the nail on the head

HIPHOP,

"The students simply have shown that they haven?t learned good manners. Or any manners at all. Any hooligan at a soccer game can boo around. I can tell you that if something like this happens at a formal ceremony in Europe, nobody will think that those students are academically educated."

"So, shame on them."

From what I have seen, such behavior is more common in the Anti-War Crowd, regardless of the setting.

 

[Dreadsox]

I tend to agree with Sting and Bonosgirl84 on this. Why is it acceptable for protestors to block streets and highways and disrupt people's daily lives, but not acceptable at a college graduation to express ones opinions? At least the students were not preventing fire and ambulance equiptement from getting though to where it needed to be.

Peace

 

[80sU2isBest]

I agree, Dreadsox. The unfortunate thing is that many liberals seem to have the philosophy "free speech as long as you agree with me".

 

[nbcrusader]

I agree, Dreadsox. The unfortunate thing is that many liberals seem to have the philosophy "free speech as long as you agree with me".

I'd agree to the extent this was a discussion of tolerance. Hiphop's point though was respect for the event - decorum - an idea that is largely absent in younger generations.

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

Firstly - not all liberals are the same. Sure we have some eejits who give liberalism a bad name but in exactly the same way there are plenty of bigoted conservatives who give conservatism a bad name. Don't judge all people who believe in a particular political philosophy based on the actions of a few.

Secondly - I think the students should have listened respectfully to the speaker even if they didn't agree. A graduation ceremony isn't a place where it's appropriate to yell and boo a speaker. I've listened to many lecturers I didn't agree with, and yet I would never even consider shouting out loud in their lecture, if I really wanted to express an opinion I would wait until after the lecture and speak to them, or else send an email.

Disagreeing with someone's ideas is fine, it's what democracy is all about. But we should also remember that behaviour that's appropriate in one context isn't appropriate in another: booing a speaker at a graduation ceremony isn't appropriate.

And yes - if it was a conservative speaker, I would expect students who disagreed to sit and listen respectfully, regardless of how strongly they disagreed. It's called courtesy and apparently it's becoming increasingly rare.

 

[STING2]

There are a lot of people who live and work in large cities or for the military and wonder if Anti-War or WTO protesters have ever heard the word "courtesy".

The graduation ceremony is not the forum for extremist, offensive, and divisive political view points. How many of the liberals here would tell a black student to sit down and shut up if the speaker announced that he was a Klu Klux Klan member and was here to talk to the students about the inferiority of other races to white people?

Ultimately the speaker at this ceremony is not at fault, but the part of the faculty that approved the speaker and his topic are the ones that have crossed the line. The speach would have been just fine if it was Chris H. to speak tonight about his opinion on the war in Iraq, 8 pm at the basketball arena. But a graduation ceremony is the wrong forum for that. How can the faculty or who ever approved the speaker expect the students to respect their speaker at the graduation ceremony when they with this action are not showing the students any respect at all. It is hypocritical to talk of the students behavior and not discuss the faculty or University members behavior in regards to allowing this topic to be discussed at a graduation ceremony.

This is not a class room discussion or a speaker coming from out of town to speak to a class, this is a Graduation ceremony. A celebration of the students graduation from the university. As I mentioned above it is not a time for extremist and divisive talk with some many family and friends gathered, not to debate politics, but to celebrate the achievments of friends and family.

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

How many of the liberals here would tell a black student to sit down and shut up if the speaker announced that he was a Klu Klux Klan member and was here to talk to the students about the inferiority of other races to white people?

Excuse me, but don't compare anti-war campaigners to the KKK. It is not only insulting to those who opposed this war, it also illustrates a complete lack of understanding of what the KKK represent.

*Fizz

 

[80sU2isBest]

Firstly - not all liberals are the same. Sure we have some eejits who give liberalism a bad name but in exactly the same way there are plenty of bigoted conservatives who give conservatism a bad name. Don't judge all people who believe in a particular political philosophy based on the actions of a few.

Fizzing, who's judging all liberals? Did I or did I not say "many liberals"?

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

I know you said that, but I was just re-affirming that while it's true to say some liberals have a problem respecting people's freedom of speech, it's not fair to label all liberals in the same way. I know you weren't doing that though.

*Fizz

 

[deep]

Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

The real injustices, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East, will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed we will swell their ranks. Once you master people by force you depend on force for control. In your isolation you begin to make mistakes.

Fear engenders cruelty; cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante's circle the damned remained motionless. We have blundered into a nation we know little about and are caught between bitter rivalries and competing ethnic groups and leaders we do not understand. We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien *****. Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus.

Hedges stops speaking because of a disturbance in the audience. Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow takes the microphone.

"My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other's opinions. (Crowd Cheers) If you wish to protest the speaker's remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate but he has the right to offer his opinion here and we would like him to continue his remarks. (Fog Horn Blows, some cheer).

The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away. The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry -- the only two ministries we bothered protecting -- is self immolation.

As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, that will begin a long bloody war of attrition; it is how they drove the British out and remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators. But within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah and was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of Southern Lebanon.

As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Meditations in Times Of Civil War," "We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair."

This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq.

We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war -- if we do not understand how deadly that poison is -- it can kill us just as surely as the disease.

We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.

We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity -- for evil -- and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone.

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press -- remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem -- have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence -- death -- is hidden from public view.

There was no more candor in the Persian Gulf War or the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. But in the age of live feeds and satellite television, the state and the military have perfected the appearance of candor.

Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.

The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true -- it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong.

War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

(A man in the audience says: "Can I say a few words here?" Hedges: Yeah, when I finish.)

Once in war, the conflict obliterates the past and the future all is one heady intoxicating present. You feel every heartbeat in war, colors are brighter, your mind races ahead of itself. (Confusion, microphone problems, etc.) We feel in wartime comradeship. (Boos) We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those who will insist that the comradeship of war is love -- the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication.

Think back on the days after the attacks on 9-11. Suddenly we no longer felt alone; we connected with strangers, even with people we did not like. We felt we belonged, that we were somehow wrapped in the embrace of the nation, the community; in short, we no longer felt alienated.

As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship -- that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime -- is within our reach. We can all have comrades.

The danger of the external threat that comes when we have an enemy does not create friendship; it creates comradeship. And those in wartime are deceived about what they are undergoing. And this is why once the threat is over, once war ends, comrades again become strangers to us. This is why after war we fall into despair.

In friendship there is a deepening of our sense of self. We become, through the friend, more aware of who we are and what we are about; we find ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Friends probe and question and challenge each other to make each of us more complete; with comradeship, the kind that comes to us in patriotic fervor, there is a suppression of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-possession. Comrades lose their identities in wartime for the collective rush of a common cause -- a common purpose. In comradeship there are no demands on the self. This is part of its appeal and one of the reasons we miss it and seek to recreate it. Comradeship allows us to escape the demands on the self that is part of friendship.

In wartime when we feel threatened, we no longer face death alone but as a group, and this makes death easier to bear. We ennoble self-sacrifice for the other, for the comrade; in short we begin to worship death. And this is what the god of war demands of us.

Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.

(Boos cheers, shouts, fog horns and the like)

 

[BVS]

This is not a class room discussion or a speaker coming from out of town to speak to a class, this is a Graduation ceremony. A celebration of the students graduation from the university. As I mentioned above it is not a time for extremist and divisive talk with some many family and friends gathered, not to debate politics, but to celebrate the achievments of friends and family.

I'm not sure if I would label him an extremist. I read the speech and enjoyed it. I agree with most of it. But I agree with you that a graduation ceremony isn't the time to bring in politics. This may be a first...

 

[Bono's shades]

I agree with what Chris Hedges had to say, but I don't think his remarks were appropriate for a graduation speech. It's kind of like when one of my older brothers, who is even more liberal than I am, insists on bringing up politics at every single friggin' family gathering. He always ends up getting in a huge fight with my dad, who is very conservative, and it spoils the gathering for everyone. There's a time and place to talk about politics, but a graduation ceremony, just like a family reunion, isn't one of them.

That being said, the students who booed were definitely showing a lack of class. What the speaker did was inappropriate for the occasion, but that doesn't excuse their behaving like hooligans.

 

[STING2]

Fizzing,

"Excuse me, but don't compare anti-war campaigners to the KKK. It is not only insulting to those who opposed this war, it also illustrates a complete lack of understanding of what the KKK represent."

You have missed my point entirely. I'm not comparing the KKK with Anti-War Protesters. What I am comparing is various topics which may be offensive to some or many people and the reactions that many people might have. I'm also looking at whether such political speaches should be made at a graduation ceremony, whether one sees it as extremist or not.

Again, though, I'm trying to get you to understand that people at a graduation ceremony don't deserve to be shocked and angered in such a way as this on such a controversial issue. There might have been several people at the ceremony who agreed with what Chris had to say in his speach. Believe it or not there might be some who would of agreed with what a KKK person would have said. The point is that both would have said things that were sickenly offensive to some or nearly all the people gathered there. The point is not really about whether Chris or a KKK leader is right in their beliefs but whether there is a point when a speaker at such a ceremony has crossed the line of respect and consideration for those he is speaking to given the context in which the speach happened.