Editor’s Note: Thirty years ago today — on May 19, 1996 —National Review founder William F. Buckley delivered the commencement address at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md. Aaron Lewis was a student leader on the committee that selected Buckley to speak and recounts why the speech remains his favorite commencement address.
When the Commencement Speaker Committee at St. John’s College, Annapolis, unanimously agreed to invite William F. Buckley Jr. to address the graduating class of 1996, there was some mild pushback from the administration. “He’s too controversial,” they said. That left us scratching our heads, but we were quick to reflect that much of the faculty and staff at the time had been les étudiant(e)s during the turbulent era when Buckley was l’enfant terrible.
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