It is perhaps a mark of how much the atmosphere among campus administrators has changed that I didn’t hear about the latest ruckus until the administration had already denounced it.
The setting was familiar: a university commencement ceremony, in this case for New York University’s Gallatin School. When the Gallatin student chair was called to the podium for his speech, he stammered out an explanation that he had thrown out his approved speech and then dove into a rote, copypasta statement about Gaza. He said he had been “freaking out” about the speech, and all that was appropriate to say for this moment was to denounce the “atrocities” and the “genocide” in Gaza.
Formulaic, of course, but in this case there were three details that stood out.
First, it was a mercifully brief speech. This is because such students are repeating what they’ve been told to say and they have no knowledge of the conflict whatsoever. They have not been educated or even brainwashed well enough to construct arguments for their ritualistic Israel hatred. They barely utter full sentences, because the point is just to say certain buzzwords. The raucous applause seemed almost condescending.
The speech was brief, also, because the speech he was going to give was set aside. That speech almost surely had nothing interesting or applause-worthy in it, and certainly nothing creative or otherwise notable. He was, in other words, forgettable. So he read a card with some words like “genocide” on it. The main problem is not that students these days have bad opinions. The problem seems to be that they are broadly incapable of basic intellectual engagement or of remotely authentic social interaction.
Lack of original thought may doom the universities before their anti-Semitism does—though the two are surely closely related.
Second, NYU was very upset that the ceremonial hijackers it is breeding do things like hijack ceremonies. Here’s the statement from university spokesman John Beckman:
“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views.
“He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules. The University is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions.
“NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”
I didn’t realize that school officials could respond immediately to stunts like this. I was under the impression that administrators who criticize students are violating the constitutional protections that the Founders enacted to let kids do whatever they want with no consequences.
Further, the statement is one of shocking clarity for a university. It actually says something.
Which leads me to believe that schools can, in fact, crack down on idiotic rulebreaking. And that they could have done so all along. Now it can be told!
And third: Much of the argument around academic freedom these days is a dodge. Long before anyone was threatening to cut funds going to schools that violated the civil rights of Jewish students, the affected students had come to administrators with a simple ask: that schools enforce their rules consistently with no double standards.
That’s it. Really. It’s hard to remember, but that’s how all this started—with Jewish students asking universities to stop enforcing rules only on behalf of favored identity groups.
And that simple request is what sent schools into a tailspin. No, they said—you can’t make us! Then eventually a president came along who said: Well yes in fact I can, because it’s federal law.
We’re here because universities refused to enforce their rules equally or consistently. Are they happy now with how far this fight has escalated? I don’t know, but that escalation was their choice. And there’s really no denying it anymore.
