<p>
</p>
<p>OK, so you are saying people are generally stupid and easily lead. No argument there.</p>
<p>There is no evidence AT ALL of greater civility in political discourse in the older and more senior representatives of major political parties in the US. Angrily demanding apologies from your political opposition, whilst holding your breath and turning blue in the face, seems to be standard practice. </p>
<p>
[quote[ why do you think that political campaigns are mostly made of misleading sound bites rather than useful discourse?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I wonder whether or not that really works.
It seems the left votes for the left and the right votes for the right regardless and the middle determines the election. I don’t know how persuaded the middle is by that stuff and to what extent they are turned off by it.</p>
<p>But I can see that it can help with turnout of your base.</p>
<p>@sorghum - Well said. Therefore, there is need to look in the mirror because our political discourse environment taught the students how to behave.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes. And by political, it really is about a partisan politics as opposed to standing on any real principles.
As pointed out by that Yale professor (other thread) sarcastic comments to the class of 2014…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>elision? I learned a new word today! Cool.</p>
<p>@fluffy2017 - Thanks for posting that quote from the Yale professor. That sarcasm is pure gold. </p>
<p>Any predictions for next year’s protest at Haverford? I hope it is not an an attack on their mascot, the “black squirrel” </p>
<p>^^ A gourmet chef, who specializes in squirrel dishes, would be interesting. </p>
<p>Here is an article that brings a lot of what is discussed here and in other parts of the forum together. His premise is higher ed is becoming a joke, and administrations have yet to figure that out. </p>
<p><a href=“Higher ed becoming a joke: Column”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/05/19/college-graduation-rice-lagarde-higher-education-costs-tuition-column/9249371/</a></p>
<p>Not sure if I am allowed to post this link, but I am sure the moderators will let me know either by leaving it or deleting it.</p>
<p>I think the students are a product of our political climate and have learned from example. People say things on social media that they would not have said to someone face to face. Grown adults have engaged in name calling and all kinds of language on FB threads, argued, and unfriended each other. The only thing that seems safe to post is funny pictures of cats. </p>
<p>We never know what will be highlighted in the media. Our kids see and hear protests in the media daily. Years ago if someone said something offensive, we dealt with that person directly. Now we record it on cell phones, it goes viral on Youtube and everyone hears it. Some things are offensive, but with media we make them bigger. Why wouldn’t students think they have a right to do this too? </p>
<p>I had dinner last night with the parents of a Haverford kid, who, according to them, says that the Haverford community thought highly of Bowen’s remarks and thought Birgeneau was immature and cowardly for not coming, that talking these things out is the Haverford way. </p>
<p>I have to say that if I were being honored by a university whose students sent that kind of letter and were likely to continue doing stuff when I came, I’d say, “No thanks. I’ve had a good career. A life of consequence. No need to be insulted by a bunch of 22 year olds. To the extent that I care about an honorary degree, I’ll wait for another university.” </p>
<p>Maybe the real problem Is lack of effective internal coordination at Haverford. I wonder if the right solution was that the students and the administration should talk. If the students can persuade the administration that this guy’s actions violated Haverford’s core principles, then the administration should withdraw the invitation. Otherwise, the students should agree not to buy the candidate. Or, the administration could just honor the de facto arrangement that any offended student group can veto speakers. Either way, invited speakers aren’t put in a situation that forces them yo be insulted in order to be honored. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Among the friends and classmates in the 2014 graduating class with whom my daughter communicates regularly, that view of Bowen’s remarks is distinctly a minority position. Most were appalled and angered by Bowen’s remarks, which were insulting, belittling, and infantilizing of their entire class, and perhaps their entire generation. They felt like they were being “yelled at” by a “grumpy old white guy” who seemed to feel that students should be “seen, and not heard.” </p>
<p>They also found a certain irony in Bowen’s lecturing them on the “proper” way to protest by holding up Bowen’s own Princeton students as a model. When George Schultz, a member of Nixon’s cabinet, was invited to receive an honorary degree from Princeton in 1973, anti-war student activists mounted a full-scale campaign to “disinvite Schultz.” Princeton steadfastly maintained its invitation, and Schultz, knowing there would be student protests, accepted the invitation. When Schultz took the podium, the protestors stood and turned their backs to him to signal their (silent) disapproval. As Bowen explained, Schultz “understood that the protestors had every right to express their opinion in a non-disruptive fashion, and he displayed the courage to come and accept his degree, knowing that many of the faculty and staff (a strong majority, I would guess, this person included) thought that the Nixon conduct of the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake, Princeton emerged from this mini-controversy more committed than ever to honoring both the right to protest in proper ways and the accomplishments of someone with whose views on some issues many disagreed.” </p>
<p>The irony is that much the same thing would have happened at Haverford if Birgeneau had accepted Haverford’s invitation, except slightly less rudely than at Princeton. Students at Haverford were planning to follow the traditional Quaker practice of “eldering,” standing in silent protest FACING the speaker to express their disapproval. The institution’s decision to invite Birgeneau had already been made, reconsidered, and redoubled. It was Birgeneau’s decision alone not to accept that invitation. The letter sent to Birgeneau by 40-some members of the Haverford community may have been harsh in tone (and many members of the Haverford community who thought Birgeneau was not an appropriate recipient of an honorary degree declined to sign on to the letter for that reason, but would have joined the silent protest). I don’t know whether the Princeton students of the 1970s wrote a similar letter to Schultz, but I am quite certain that much harsher things were said about him by leaders of the “disinvite Schultz” movement–phrases like “war criminal” were bandied about pretty freely in those days. The arrogance, presumptuousness, and hypocrisy in Bowen’s publicly calling out Haverford students and instructing them on the “proper” way to protest by acting as his Princeton students had done in the 1970s–when that is in fact just exactly what they were planning to do, had not the invited but gutless honorary degree recipient backed out rather than face protest–is breathtaking. </p>
<p>" They felt like they were being “yelled at” by a “grumpy old white guy”</p>
<p>It is sad that today’s college students can’t listen to a talk that criticizes a position of a minority of students without feeling that they personally were “yelled at”. They have been too spoiled “oh noes my feelings are hurt”. Wait till they get into the real world. </p>
<p>Then they have to resort to ageist and racist attacks on a distinguished man. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Haverford President Dan Weiss effectively acknowledged that Haverford’s process for selecting honorary degree recipients is flawed. In a letter sent out to the Haverford community yesterday, Weiss reiterated that the college values the voices of its students, including student “activists,” and committed to reconsider the college’s process for selecting honorary degree recipients so as to ensure a greater voice for students. This was another sore point with many of the graduating seniors. Haverford prides itself on the degree to which students are involved in governance of every aspect of the institution, and in keeping with the college’s Quaker roots, decisions are made by consensus (at least to the degree possible). Many students felt the choice of degree recipients was being rammed down their throats in a process in which they had very little say, in a manner inconsistent with the college’s ideals as well as its actual practices in most other areas. For graduating seniors, commencement was “their day”–the culminating celebration to cap off their 4-year experience, yet they felt the administration was dictating that they accept as an honorary degree recipient a controversial figure who many doubted was a good fit given Haverford’s values-driven educational philosophy and traditions. Many, like my own daughter, just didn’t want their graduation to be about Robert Birgeneau, one way or the other. Weiss’ statement about reforming the selection process is a huge concession to the students, and while Weiss did not mention Bowen by name, his own words and actions can be seen as an implicit rebuke to Bowen.</p>
<p>It’s not as if Haverford shies away from controversial speakers. There are guest speakers on campus all the time, many of them controversial, expressing widely varying points of view. The one constant is that students always have an opportunity to interact with the guest speakers–it’s the college’s policy that, at a minimum, there must be an opportunity for Q&A with any outside speaker invited to campus, if not more substantial forms of give-and-take dialog. The singular exception, ironically, is commencement, when a series of speakers (the presidents of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges and the honorary degree recipients) have the opportunity to deliver brief remarks (5 minutes apiece for the honorees, longer for the Haverford and Bryn Mawr presidents) without any opportunity for students to respond. So for Haverford’s graduating seniors, all the blather about how Haverford students were “squelching free speech” and “shutting down dialog” also looks hilariously misinformed, since with or without Robert Birgeneau’s 5-minute acceptance speech, commencement was already the one day in their entire 4-year academic career that it was guaranteed genuine dialog would not be possible.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While I do not think it serves much purpose to discuss all the points --eloquently listed by BClinton-- except to state that I disagree with almost all of them, I think this last line is the one I disagree the most with: </p>
<p>Sending the graduates to the real work with a healthy dose of reality and perhaps humility is EXACTLY what the graduates needed. This type of message is really what they need to understand that their actions and words carry consequences, and that the time to be excused for mishaps and coddled by their loved ones and almost every adult in their life is … over. Time to be judged and measured objectively has come! </p>
<p>Obviously, and for very obvious reason, a parent of a Haverford student might disagree, but it appears that more than a few of us believe that what happened at the school regarding Birgeneau’s invitation was wrong, and that the actions of a small groups of students were reprehensible, and in a way condoned by the administration.</p>
<p>This is not a case of two wrongs making one right. There were two wrongs here: the obnoxious and clueless letter from the students and the unfortunate decision by Birgeneau to stay away. The words from Bowen were just a small corrective step. </p>
<p>Huge kudos to him to show a bit of the courage that is so lacking among our top educators. We need more people who do not hesitate to speak up, and a lot fewer spineless leaders who find it necessary to “reforming the selection process is a huge concession to the students.” </p>
<p>Actions that can be seen as an implicit rebuke to Bowen should best be remembered when others receive an invitation by the school in the future! Unless they accept to simply act like muzzled puppets that tote the party line in exchange for a piece of parchment! </p>
<p>Well, I don’t blame Birgeneau at all for passing on this silliness. Condi Rice, either. Who needs it?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s it at all. They are accustomed to being treated as adults by their own institution. They don’t need to be demeaned and scolded like naughty 4-year-olds at the event that is supposed to celebrate the culmination of a 4-year experience in which they have been expected to act as adults, and for the most part have risen to that occasion. And whether they agreed or disagreed with the protesters who sent the letter to Birgenau, many felt it was an abuse of Bowen’s privilege of the podium to make a speech publicly denouncing the exercise of free speech rights by some of their classmates, in a forum where the accused were part of a captive audience with no opportunity to respond.</p>
<p>And Haverford grads do quite well in the “real world,” thank you, in no small part because the college’s traditions of student self-governance teach them to take responsibility and act as adults, which gives them a huge leg up over people coming out of institutions where less is expected of students. </p>
<p>The other aspect of Bowen’s remarks that many (myself included) found deeply annoying and offensive was that his views were just profoundly internally inconsistent. In addition to the Princeton incident that so closely paralleled the Haverford situation (see a couple of posts up), Bowen also cited Notre Dame’s handling of President Obama’s commencement address and honorary degree as a model to be emulated. Well. let’s see, what happened at Notre Dame? Some 360,000 people signed a petition “demanding” that Notre Dame rescind its invitation on grounds that Obama held positions on abortion and embryonic stem cell research that were at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church. The University refused to rescind, so huge, loud, angry protests were mounted. The streets were lined with protestors denouncing Obama as a “baby-killer” and worse. Dozens were arrested for trespassing when they tried to break in and disrupt the commencement. Hecklers repeatedly tried to disrupt Obama’s commencement speech. Many Catholic bishops denounced both Notre Dame and Obama, calling the school’s decision to invite him “obscene,” “an abomination,” and the like; at least one Bishop demanded that Notre Dame change its name because it “dishonored” the Virgin Mary to have her name associated with such vile iniquity. Another person scheduled to receive a major award at the ceremony backed out because she didn’t want to be associated with Notre dame’s honoring of Obama. No doubt all these people were acting out of sincere religious convictions, but these sorts of demonstrative acts make the Haverford protesters’ letter look mighty tame in comparison. Yet Notre Dame was a model of the “proper” way to protest, and the Haverford protesters were out of line? I’m sorry, that’s just too much to stomach. Here’s the real difference: Obama, like George Schultz and countless others before him, knew the protests were coming but had the intestinal fortitude to go into the lion’s den and stand his ground. Rejecting the invitation is the coward’s way out. Protests at Haverford would have been much more civil than those at Notre Dame–no hecklers, no mass demonstrations, no attempts to disrupt the ceremony. But Birgeneau didn’t have the stomach even for such mild silent protests as students at Haverford would mount, and he was deterred by a single, stridently worded letter signed by all of 40 or 50 people. Wimp. Coward. If “free speech” was thwarted at Haverford, it was Birgeneau doing the self-thwarting.</p>
<p>The other difference is that the Notre Dame protesters weren’t loudly denounced in the media as enemies of free speech. (Which I don’t think they were, by the way; like the Haverford protesters, they were merely exercising their free speech rights, and like the Haverford protesters they were not denying anyone else’s rights of free speech). Why the double standard? </p>
<p>Didn’t Bowen also point a finger at Birgeneau in his speech? </p>
<p>Fwiw, is it possible that Birgeneau simply did not feel to discuss the issue with the type of people who penned the letter, and this based on the irrational tone of the letter? In theory, a dialogue would have been better – and I think that that was Bowen’s point. However, it does not change much to the basic fact that the “demands” of the students are what triggered the problems, and that some of us believe that being publicly “chastised” by a speaker who addresses the issue was acceptable. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If they were actually adults, they would understand that the comments made by Bowden hardly was the same as a scolding of naughty 4 year olds and it was directed at a subset of people, not the entire school.</p>
<p>If that was their reaction though, along with the ageist and racist comment, then it wasn’t that they were used to being treated as adults, they were used to being treated as coddled snowflakes.</p>
<p>They also may want to go back to class and understand the difference between what they perceived (“publicly denouncing the exercise of free speech”) and what someone actually did (comment about the stupidity of what the protesters position was).</p>
<p>As for Notre Dame, did they send a letter to the President asking him to apologize, admit culpability, recant and lead a task force to change things? If they did and you can find it, can you post a link? Thanks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, sort of. He said he thought Birgeneau should have accepted Haverford’s invitation, But then he let Birgeneau off the hook by saying that Birgeneau’s mistake was that he “failed to make proper allowance for the immature and, yes, arrogant inclinations of some protesters.” So in a way he just threw Birgeneau’s decision not to attend right back on the students, and on Haverford as an institution which he clearly implied had not handled this matter as well as Princeton and Notre Dame had. (Of course, it’s always much easier for the institution to come across as a hero of free speech if the speaker decides to actually show up and speak when invited to do so, protests notwithstanding, and it’s oh-so-easy, albeit intellectually lazy, to take potshots at the protesters and the institution if the invited speaker decides not to show up). </p>