Graduation season will soon be upon us, and the only thing more fun than finding out who the commencement speakers will be at area institutions of higher education is finding out who will be offended by the presence or absence of which speakers.
The 2014 edition of the free speech follies led off with Brandeis University, which first invited and then uninvited the Somali-born writer and women’s rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ms. Ali’s speeches and writings many critical of female genital mutilation and Islam have been well known for years, but apparently not well known to the leadership of Brandeis, which decided, upon review, to cave in to the pressure brought by some faculty, students, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Now, Suffolk University students are making a bid to join the follies. They are petitioning for the university to rescind its invitation to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, to be their speaker, citing Mr. Foxman’s opposition to a congressional resolution that would recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.
We would have thought that any school would consider it something of a coup to get a speaker of Ms. Ali’s or Mr. Foxman’s caliber to address their graduates.
College commencements are or are supposed to be about new beginnings. Hearing the thoughts and words of public figures who have a lifetime of experience different from one’s own would surely reinforce the lessons learned in so many classrooms and seminars during one’s college years.
Today’s collegians, having grown up in a world poisoned by the illiberality of political correctness, can almost be forgiven for their errors.
But the college administrators responsible for leading them out of ignorance cannot be so easily forgiven.
Education and the First Amendment are not about being comfortable and finding agreement. They are about free speech and exposure to new, different, even heretical ideas.
We do not agree with every word, thought and position that Ms. Ali or Mr. Foxman utters, holds, or takes. But both are respected, educated figures with something to say.
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