Conservatives odd obsession with commencement speakers

Over the past few years the conservative media has focused a lot of attention on the political affiliation of commencement speakers at various higher learning institutions across the country. The reason for this attention stems from protests by students who don't want the culmination of years of hard work to be attenuated by orators whose ideology they find offensive.

In a recent piece my colleague Maria Servold puts voice to the conservative argument in this debate, stating rightfully so that "American universities are where ideas of all kinds are encouraged and explored". It should be noted that typically these speakers choose not to speak instead of being told that they can no longer speak. These students are simply expressing their displeasure with the ideas that the speaker represents. They have no power to prevent the speaker from attending unless there is such universal outrage that the school is left no other choice.

The reality is that these protests represent the exact exchange of ideas that should be encouraged.

Maria then ends her piece with the following line: "A truly open-minded person can listen to a speech by someone they disagree with, without throwing a fit first." While "throwing a fit" is probably a poor designation for a group of students organizing to advocate for a position it is certainly true that open minded people should be able to listen to those they disagree with.

Of course it is also true that these students made a choice to attend a specific collage because they felt it represented them so if these same students find the words of a student organization, a professor, or an administrator to be offensive and in clear opposition to their ideology they are well within their rights to protest.

As a proud graduate of Hillsdale College one imagines that years ago Maria made a similar choice and selected a school that represented her conservative ideology. Otherwise she might have picked a liberal leaning school where she could have experienced a greater breadth and depth of ideas that she obviously values for her more liberal brethren.

One also imagines that she found very little to dislike in the past decade of commencement speakers for her alma mater which includes the following:

2014 - Eric Metaxas
2013 - Ted Cruz
2012 - Roger Scruton
2011 - Mark Helprin
2010 - Edwin Meese
2009 - Hadley Arkes
2008 - Louis J Freeh
2007 - Mitt Romney
2006 - Harvey Mansfield
2005 - Ken Starr

It would seem that Hillsdale College doesn't share Maria's passion for challenging graduates with opposing voices at their commencement.

In the end most liberals would probably agree with Maria's assertion that who a school chooses to talk at their graduation ceremony really isn't that important. But to imply that the conservative media or jilted speakers are within their rights to whine about who is chosen to talk while students somehow are not doesn't suggest that conservatives concerns on this topic are really about open mindedness.