Let Them Get Mad?
On whether "neutrality" is the right principle for commencement speakers.
What kind of speech is a graduation address? According to John Tomasi, the president of Heterodox Academy, graduation speeches should be considered a species of official speech, constrained by the same considerations attendant on college leaders when speaking for their institution. A proponent of “institutional neutrality,” whereby those speaking on behalf of a college or university avoid taking positions on divisive questions of public concern, Tomasi would extend the umbrella of neutrality to commencement speakers, since they are “in some sense deputized to represent the institution on graduation day.”
Therefore, Tomasi writes, such speakers should take care to speak “to and for all the members of the institution — a group that is diverse by design as well as by fact.” When the University of Michigan history professor and outgoing faculty senate chair Derek Peterson, during his remarks at Michigan’s commencement, asked his audience to “sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza,” he was certainly not speaking for all members of the institution, some of whom have repudiated the drift of his speech. Were Peterson’s remarks inappropriate to the occasion?
Michigan’s president Domenico Grasso thought so; he saw fit to issue an official apology for Peterson’s speech, calling it “hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community.” But the group of Michigan law professors who formulated Michigan’s policy of institutional neutrality charged that it was Domenico’s apology that violated institutional neutrality:
[Domenico] asserted that Peterson’s comments “do not represent our institutional position. Nor do they represent the diversity of views across our entire faculty.” Given its tone and framing, Grasso’s apology could easily be taken to suggest that the University holds an “institutional position” opposed to pro-Palestine activism — rather than no position at all. In his statement, Grasso mentioned institutional neutrality only in a five-word footnote, and said nothing about its meaning or importance.
To my mind, the law professors are clearly correct that Domenico’s apology violated Michigan’s institutional-neutrality policy. That leaves unresolved the question of whether Peterson’s initial remarks were appropriate. The law professors are somewhat circumspect on this point. They observe that “In itself, it is not a violation of institutional neutrality for the University president to reprimand a commencement speaker who departs from an approved script and delivers remarks that are predictably divisive” — which is what Peterson stands accused of. And they go on to say that, when there are “norms and procedures guiding official ceremonies” in place, it is appropriate for university leaders to “admonish a speaker who treats those norms and procedures with disregard — especially when the speaker’s official title might lead listeners to think he speaks for the University.”
One is left to conclude that Domenico was within his rights to apologize, but that to conform to the requirements of institutional neutrality, his apology should have been more parsimonious.
An open letter signed by over 1000 Michigan faculty members defended Peterson’s remarks without qualification — they were “thoughtful, informed, instructive, and ethically rich.” Any institutional reprisal can only reveal, they write, “that there is nothing neutral about the institution’s supposed commitment to institutional neutrality, and that the institution’s supposed principles on diversity of thought and freedom of expression cease to operate when a faculty member expresses a ‘forbidden’ view.”
This sounds good, but it’s hard to imagine that “forbidden” views which didn’t find broad favor among the faculty would have garnered support of this sort. If an outgoing faculty senate president had celebrated pro-life activists, say, or had accused pro-Palestinian activists of being dupes of Hamas, or had described affirmative action as an immoral institution whose elimination by the Supreme Court is a great good — one could multiply examples of this kind forever — would so many faculty members leap to his defense? Whose forbidden views get scolded by whom, and whose defended?
The morass opened up by these questions would certainly be avoided if some version of Tomasi’s neutrality principle were applied to graduation speakers. I can’t say I entirely like the idea, though. It would be fair, and it would avoid many kinds of trouble. But it might also be boring. Wouldn’t it be better if, within very broad limits, graduation speakers could just say what they thought? Sometimes, some people will get mad. So what?
Somehow the case of visiting speakers feels different to me from college leaders, and I'm more open to the idea of something like institutional neutrality applying to commencement speeches from internal college leaders than I am to the idea of them applying to the visiting speakers they bring in.
I'm tempted to say that's because when people are invited to come to campus to give commencement speakers, they're invited in an individual capacity. But when the university president speaks at graduation, they're doing so in their capacity as a representative of the university. But I don't think this is easy/obvious. Anybody who likes institutional neutrality policies will inevitably face tricky questions about what sorts of speech they should cover--what counts as *institutional* speech--and what sorts they shouldn't.
Graduation speeches should NOT represent the university. The message, whether impliied or verbatim, should be "Forget everything we've told you. You've got the credential, now you can start LEARNING." The older "non-traditional" students already know this, since they've already experienced actual LEARNING.