I must quote this wonderful wonderful commencement speech. It points to the cancer that is spreading in American campus, especially elite schools. My experience with such tyrannical and yet superficial "humanitarianist" is frustrating at best. I am so glad that at least among graduate students, intellectual life is much better. Disagreement is very pleasant experience here.
Members of the Class of 2014, I salute you. My warmest wishes on the occasion of your graduation from this fine institution.
And, before I go any further, I would like to express my personal
thanks to all of you for not rescinding my invitation. I know that
matters were dicey for a while, given that I have held and defended
actual positions on politically contested issues. Now and then I’ve
strayed from the party line. And if the demonstrators would quiet down
for a moment, I’d like to offer an abject apology for any way in which I
have offended against the increasingly narrow and often obscure values
of the academy.
In my day, the college campus was a place that
celebrated the diversity of ideas. Pure argument was our guide. Staking
out an unpopular position was admired -- and the admiration, in turn,
provided excellent training in the virtues of tolerance on the one hand
and, on the other, integrity.
Your generation, I am pleased to
say, seems to be doing away with all that. There’s no need for the
ritual give and take of serious argument when, in your early 20s, you
already know the answers to all questions. How marvelous it must be to
realize at so tender an age that you will never, ever change your mind,
because you will never, ever encounter disagreement! How I wish I’d had
your confidence and fortitude. I could have spared myself many hours of
patient reflection and intellectual struggle over the great issues of
the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are graduating into a world
of enormous complexity and conflict. There are corners of the globe
where violence and war and abject oppression still dominate. Capitalism
is concentrating wealth in fewer hands but, in the developing world,
lifting tens of millions out of poverty. Traditional societies are
caught in an increasingly desperate struggle between the perils of
fundamentalism on the one side and the perils of modernism on the other.
Given your generation’s penchant for shutting down speakers with whom
you disagree, I am assuming that you have no intention of playing any
serious adult role in mediating those conflicts. And that’s fine. We
should leave the task of mediation to those unsophisticated enough to be
sensitive to the concerns of both sides.
Besides, you will face
more important problems. Once you depart the campus, the world will make
unjust demands on you. You will have to work for a living. You will
have to put up with people whose views you despise. Fortunately, as long
as you don’t waste precious time reflecting in a serious way on the
issues of the day -- or, worse, contemplating the possibility that you
might be mistaken on a question or two -- you should have plenty of
hours for Twitter and Google Hangout and the nonstop party that every
truly just society was meant to be.
Indeed, a lack of reflection
can be of enormous assistance to an act of protest. Consider the
contretemps at Smith College over the invitation extended to Christine
Lagarde, the head of the International Money Fund, who has decided not to attend.
Were one to think seriously about the implications of the anti-IMF
argument -- and, please, ladies and gentlemen, do nothing of the kind!
-- one would also presumably have to bar from the stage Lagarde’s fellow
conspirators, particularly leaders of the IMF’s biggest financial
supporter, the United States of America. (The Tea Party, happily,
opposes the IMF. Perhaps one of its leaders might be invited next year.)
Then there are your fellows at Rutgers University, who rose up to force
the estimable Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state and national
security adviser, to withdraw.
The protest was worded with unusual care, citing the war in Iraq and
the “torture” practiced by the Central Intelligence Agency. Cleverly
omitted was the drone war. This elision allows the protesters to wish
away the massive drone war that President Barack Obama's administration
has conducted now for more than five years, with significant loss of innocent life.
As for the Iraq war, well, among its early and enthusiastic supporters
was -- to take a name at random -- then-Senator Hillary Clinton. But
don’t worry. Consistency in protest requires careful and reflective
thought, and that is exactly what we should be avoiding here.
The literary critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book
titled "Nostalgia for the Absolute,” long ago predicted this moment. We
have an attraction, he contended, to higher truths that can sweep away
complexity and nuance. We like systems that can explain everything.
Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once
held on the Western imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought
that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church. You
and your fellow students -- and your professors as well; one mustn’t
forget their role -- are therefore to be congratulated for your
involvement in the excellent work of bringing back the Middle Ages.
Now, before I close, I would like to address those members of the Class
of 2014 who might think that it’s wrong to ban speakers whose views you
reject. Your reactionary belief in tolerance and open-mindedness is
truly distressing. I beg you to remember that every controversial
question has only one answer. You have absolutely nothing to learn from
people whose opinions you dislike.
And now, graduates, before
things go too far -- before you run the risk of being thought to be on
the road to becoming responsible adults -- please, rise to your feet,
and, speaking with one voice, shout me down!
Thank you.
