I’ve learned a lot on this thread. I used to think it was a 100% political move. Now I understand the problems with NCF, and I see how changes need to be made. HOWEVER, I do think the situation is being exploited for political gain.
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No question, but isn’t everything that has to do with the state budget?
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Thought I would put this here too since it’s a more developed thread than the other…
Seems the students are quite intelligent and willing to do what they want rather than get pushed around. Kudos to them!
From the link:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — New College of Florida students, with help from alumni, this week are hosting a private graduation ceremony separate from the school’s official commencement in the face of a campus takeover at the hands of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The students, who have fundraised $100,000 for the event, want to hold a ceremony “on our terms” after school officials tapped Scott Atlas, a top adviser to former President Donald Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic, to speak at their commencement. On Tuesday, they announced that Maya Wiley, an attorney and former MSNBC commentator who is president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, will be the keynote speaker during the alternative graduation.
“We’re now guaranteed a graduation surrounded by the New College community members that truly want to celebrate who we are, rather than those attempting to change our culture,” Madison Markham, a graduating senior and one of the students planning the event, said in a statement.
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Yes, props to them. But I don’t get your comment about being ‘pushed around’. They are college seniors who will be gone before significant changes occur.
Their graduation speaker was going to be Scott Atlas, anti-vaxxer/proponent of testing the “herd immunity” hypothesis (something Gov.DeSantis embraced).
I’m wondering how many people came to hear him speak.
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So, a bad graduation speaker is ‘pushing’ young adults around? (Based on the reports of the speech, he was jeered and booed.)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/20/us/scott-atlas-new-college-florida-keynote-speech-boos/index.html
I think “pushed around” referred to having a graduation speaker chosen who so strongly contrasts with everything a university in general and this college in particular, stands for - having no voice in the process and being imposed, at best, someone who beggars belief, at worst an insult to science&thinking everywhere, as a graduation speaker (what next, a flat-earther? someone doubting women have a soul? It’s just… astounding to have chosen s.o most famous for disregarding research at a university where undergraduate research is a core value. I’m sure there were conservative speakers that were solid academically and could have been chosen that didn’t carry that baggage - or there could have been some recognition the graduating seniors weren’t what the Board&Governor wanted but that they’d soon be out, so that the speaker could match them one last time then good riddance).
Finding another speaker was a clever work-around.
I think being absent would have been better than booing and jeering, but they’re college students 
and they must have wanted to walk regardless of the speaker. Thanks for posting the article.
The current students will either transfer or choose to stay with the new guidelines.
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Of course, if the goal in the choice of graduation speaker was to pick a political fight, then a conservative (or otherwise) speaker without “baggage” would be less effective toward that goal.
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Sometimes it is good to listen to opposing viewpoints. Isn’t that really the point of earning an education versus indoctrination ?
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What value comes from listening to a radiologist say incorrect things about a field in which he has no expertise?
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I would have to listen to that individual’s speech before coming to any conclusion as to its merits.
An education is about valuing expertise and, if two experts disagree, listening to and evaluating their arguments.
Being forced to consider the arguments of someone who is outside of their field and has no expertise is indoctrination.
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I think anyone who hasn’t been sealed in a vault for the past decade has heard more than enough of this type of “opposing viewpoint.” To imply that the problem is unwillingness to listen is simply gaslighting.
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I believe being exposed to opposing viewpoints (all viewpoints) during the educational experience is valuable to developing critical thinking and respectful debate.
I do not think the graduating seniors should be forced to listen to a speaker that is not desired by the majority of the class during their graduation ceremony and celebration.
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What merits? It’s a graduation speech, not an academic lecture. The learning part of the college experience for graduates is over*. A commencement speaker’s job is to help students reflect back on their years in college, and inspire them to apply what they’ve gotten out of that to their adult lives in the real world.
There was nothing to indicate that Atlas couldn’t do that, but it’s also not as though he’s a well-known public speaker who’d done this gig before. He’d done nothing to earn any benefit of the doubt. Knowing his past, it’s quite obvious that giving him this platform was nothing more than a petty provocation. It’s poking the graduates in the eye, just to get some more notoriety and own the libs.
And, sure enough, what did Atlas use his time to do? He used a commencement speech to criticize pandemic restrictions. It’s so easy, really: all you have to do is acknowledge that life got hard for university students and everyone else for about a year after March of 2020, and they had to adjust to a lot of adversity but they’re stronger as a community for it, blah blah blah. Instead, Atlas decided to be openly political, and rail against the White House.
Even more damning is that he also stood up there and advocated for the sort of contrarian, conspiratorialist, anti-expertise mindset that drives people to QAnon. That’s the exact opposite of a celebration of systematic education and higher learning. Who advises people who just spent four years becoming experts at something to stop listening to subject matter experts, but instead to, without using those exact words, “do your own research?” Besides, of course, a radiologist who won’t listen to epidemiologist advice re: a virus.
*Thankfully, this allows us to leave aside debating whether a society has to just listen to and engage in good faith everyone who wants to relitigate intellectual and other arguments that have been roundly defeated in the past, just because it’s “good to be exposed to other opinions”
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Absolutely, it’s good to hear and discuss opinions, as long as the nature of what’s presented is not confused with knowledge, science, or facts.
So, it’s fine if there are opposing viewpoints debating whether keeping schools open or closed had benefits and for whom, or how long to isolate so as not to contaminate others, or how important good ventilation is.
Some subjects that this speaker was known for however seemed to fall into Arendt’s purposeful blurring between fact and opinion - they do not belong to the same epistemological field but are presented as such, so that people have trouble figuring out which category what they’re hearing belongs to.
There’s a vast body of knowledge that simply doesn’t fall under “opposing viewpoints”. They are, or are not.
For instance, you don’t spend time in Physics class debating whether gravity matters, whether 5X2 might be 10, 11 or 12, or debating the existence of photosynthesis: they are scientific truths and cannot be “discussed”. There is no “viewpoint” or “opinion” about them and any professor or person of authority speaking to students pretending to question the existence of gravity, basic multiplication tables, or photosynthesis would be considered irrational and unfit.
(Belief systems can be explored in Epistemology or History of Science, and are often included in doctors’ training because they can lead to communication or health management issues. They are never confused with actual science.)
Covid vaccines’ usefulness or lack thereof, the pandemic existing or not, covid being dangerous, masks’ usefulness in preventing airborne disease, or a public health policy that is antithetical to the very concept of public health, are our decade’s equivalent to gravity.
Scott Atlas has decided it was advantageous to believe otherwise: fine for a pundit but unfit for a university speaker. It’s the equivalent of flat-earthers or people wondering whether women have souls. No university would invite a speaker whose main claim of fame was telling people, over and over, that women don’t have souls. He’s free to say so everywhere on the radio, on TV, on the street, at a pulpit if he so wishes but that discourse doesn’t belong at a university.
It was likely especially galling because his “brand” is dismissing research for his beliefs (which, again, is fine in an individual context but not within the context of a university, as a graduation speaker) at a university where undergraduate research is a core value.
Modern universities exist because we distinguish between the nature of knowledge (and the research that is linked to it) and the nature of belief. Knowing that difference is crucial to a college education (and/or getting the IBD :p)
TLDR: it’s good to listen to opposing viewpoints, except when they’re not viewpoints at all but one fact and one belief, ie., not of the same epistemological nature, with universities’ mission very clear about that distinction.
(And yes, that epistemological distinction is very very dear to me.)
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Notre Dame asks the president to speak, and some didn’t want to listen to Obama and others didn’t want to listen to Trump. Sometimes life just hands you lemons.
I can’t tell you who my grad speaker was at either graduation. For the first, I’d had quite a few cocktails even though it was at 10 am (we started early). For the second there were two ceremonies and I don’t know who spoke at either - probably the Dean of the school and then the Chancellor of the university. Definitely not Oprah who was a newscaster in Baltimore at the time so could have been asked and just come over and spoke and still made the noon news broadcast.
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While I understand your point, I think you are comparing apples and oranges. 
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I don’t think I am. I don’t know how many schools let their students vote on the graduation speakers, or if they (the students) have a limited budget to pay the speaker. I just don’t think that many schools do that. Public schools, as NCF is, have the governor, or a senator, or an astronaut. I wonder who the speakers have been in the last few years?
There is no question DeSantis is trying to change NCF. It is costing the state too much money to have 87 people graduate per year and he thinks it just isn’t worth it. I don’t disagree with him (with his methods? yes). If the current students don’t want to go to a school where they can’t choose their graduation speaker, they can leave but they may not get that option at another school either. Did anyone have ‘choose the graduation speaker’ on their check lists when picking a college?
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Your response is based on the assumption that you already know the contents of his speech. I could understand your approach in the case of a speaker well known for promoting hate speech, but not for one with a different set of values. My preference is to listen prior to judging the content of one’s speech or position.
P.S. I view & listen to a variety of news sources including MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and NewsNation. Although I do understand the base ideologies of each network, I still learn from all of them. Exposure to different perspectives helps me to better understand an issue.
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