Condi Rice will not be this year\u2019s commencement speaker at Rutgers University after all.<\/p>\n
Due to the controversy generated by some students and faculty over Rutgers\u2019 decision to invite the former Secretary of State, Rice decided to back out, explaining that she didn\u2019t want to be \u201ca distraction\u201d at a college graduation.<\/p>\n
This whole ugly affair is revealing, not just of the atmosphere of this one institution of higher learning, but of the atmosphere of the contemporary academic world.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that President Robert Barchi did not succumb to the students\u2019 and faculty\u2019s demands that the school disinvite Rice due to her involvement in the Iraq War. But neither did he utter a syllable\u2019s worth of condemnation <\/i>of their tactics, <\/i>proving that, as always, the lion\u2019s share of grease always goes to the leftist squeaky wheel in the world of higher education.<\/p>\n
Beyond this, Barchi passed the buck, and actually encouraged the notion that the anti-Rice forces were in the right.\u00a0 Barchi insisted that he hadn\u2019t \u201cthe power\u201d to rescind the invitation to Rice\u2014implying, of course, that had <\/i>he the power, he would\u2019ve done so. Only the Board of Governors, Barchi continued, has that power.\u00a0 \u201cIf you want to discuss ways of how we can (choose a commencement speaker) going forward, where we can guarantee that the Board has more input when they arrive at the discussion,\u201d he told protestors, then \u201cI think we can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Translation: We won\u2019t make the mistake of inviting a Republican ever again.<\/p>\n
The notion that, as Barchi suggests, the controversy over Rice reveals that the Rutgers community welcomes a marketplace of ideas, a vigorous exchange over contentious issues, is more than a fiction; it is a lie.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n
And that is the real scandal that the Rice affair unveils, the dirty secret that academia, the one place in American life where it should <\/i>be possible to discuss, genuinely discuss, all manner of disputable topics, is nothing of the kind.<\/p>\n
The faculty and students of Rutgers didn\u2019t disagree<\/i> with their school\u2019s decision to invite Rice.\u00a0 They refused <\/i>it.\u00a0 Between the one and the other lies the difference between civilization and barbarism.<\/p>\n
There was no spirited discussion over the administration\u2019s selection of Rice for commencement speaker. Rather, the invitee\u2019s enemies employed the kinds of strong-arm tactics for which leftist student and faculty activists have become known. \u00a0To see that this is so, we need only consult those of Rutgers\u2019 students who wanted <\/i>for Rice to speak at Rutgers.<\/p>\n
The Rutgers College Republicans, the Eagleton Undergraduate Associates, and Greek Life at Rutgers University were among those student groups that petitioned Barchi to denounce the anti-Rice forces for having engendered a \u201chostile campus environment\u201d on campus.\u00a0 Speaking on their behalf, Donald Coughlan, chairman of the New Jersey College Republicans, wrote that all it took was a \u201csmall minority of the student body and intolerant faculty members\u201d to frustrate the desires of an \u201coverwhelming\u201d majority of students that had looked forward to hearing Rice speak.<\/p>\n
Not only had Rice\u2019s detractors \u201cprotested loudly\u201d from the time that it was announced that she would be the commencement speaker.\u00a0 Not only did dozens of them hold a \u201csit in\u201d at Barchi\u2019s office.\u00a0 Disgruntled faculty fired off an email to all students urging them to participate in a \u201cteach-in\u201d to rally against Rice.<\/p>\n
Coughlan notes that \u201cmost students\u2026who do not share the opinions of\u201d these professors and who know them well were \u201cintimidated\u201d by the emails.<\/p>\n
A college education is, or is supposed to be, an education into the best of what students\u2019 civilization has to offer, an inheritance, comprised as it is of millennia worth of achievements both intellectual and moral, at once encourages and requires for its appreciation the cultivation of the virtues of head and heart, mind and character.<\/p>\n
As the situation at Rutgers clarifies for all with eyes to see, this civilizing mission has been radically turned on its head.\u00a0 Coercion and intimidation, after all, are the tried and true methods of choice of the savage, the barbarian.\u00a0 Infinitely worse, though, is that it is faculty<\/i>\u2014those entrusted with taming the beast that is the next generation\u2014that have instructed their students in the art of wielding these weapons as they crusade for one cause after the other.<\/p>\n
And university administrators cower.<\/p>\n
This is the academic world today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Condi Rice will not be this year\u2019s commencement speaker at Rutgers University after all. Due to the controversy generated by some students and faculty over Rutgers\u2019 decision to invite the former Secretary of State, Rice decided to back out, explaining that she didn\u2019t want to be \u201ca distraction\u201d at a college graduation. This whole ugly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n