There is still justice in the world.
Last week, former UC-Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau withdrew as Haverford College’s commencement speaker in the face of student protests over the violent way police dispersed Occupy protesters at Berkeley in 2011. It was a last-minute shot in this year’s embarrassing spate of commencement disinvitations and protests.
But Birgeneau’s replacement, former Princeton president William Bowen, surprised the crowd at this weekend’s graduation by using his address to publicly rebuke the Haverford’s illiberal student protesters (see the video over at The Corner). As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton and a nationally respected higher education leader, called the student protestors’ approach both “immature” and “arrogant” and the subsequent withdrawal of Robert J. Birgeneau, former chancellor of the University of California Berkeley, a “defeat” for the Quaker college and its ideals.
Bowen got a standing ovation.
It’s about time we see more pushback against efforts to silence and shame “controversial” speakers and honorees. If only the commencement speakers at Brandeis, Rutgers, and Smith had been so bold.
The reaction to Bowen’s speech shows that students and parents have had enough of this nonsense. They know a perpetually-aggrieved minority of students and faculty shouldn’t have a hecklers’ veto over every commencement honoree; they know protecting students’ freedom to learn means protecting intellectual diversity and tolerance.
To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, virtue may finally be thrust on the academy by its impudent crimes.