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.
Universities will only invite leftists to speak and will be (are) seen as a power centre of the left. Given that they are dependent on the public’s money, being systematically hostile to half (or more, depending on the topic) of the public’s opinions and supportive of the other half will mean universities will have to face a hostile government threatening to withdraw funding about half the time
Personally I’m for it because I want retarded leftists to lose their jobs, but you asked and I answered
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.
>Sometimes, some people will get mad. So what?
Universities will only invite leftists to speak and will be (are) seen as a power centre of the left. Given that they are dependent on the public’s money, being systematically hostile to half (or more, depending on the topic) of the public’s opinions and supportive of the other half will mean universities will have to face a hostile government threatening to withdraw funding about half the time
Personally I’m for it because I want retarded leftists to lose their jobs, but you asked and I answered
God, yes. People can get mad and so what, that could be pretty much the entire policy everywhere for all time about speech on campus.