Gothamist reports on the heartbroken students in New York who are being denied their Gaza-given right to speak at graduation.
“Commencement ceremonies at several local universities have undergone a post-Oct. 7 overhaul,” we’re told, “and some students say their free speech rights are being suppressed.”
For example, there will be no live student speech at the “school-specific ceremonies” (the ones that aren’t university-wide) at the New York University and City University of New York commencements. The law schools appear especially broken up about the new rule.
I’m also not speaking at any New York-area sub-commencement ceremonies, and so perhaps I should join the “First Amendment” lawsuit that anti-Zionists are filing against CUNY.
You see, CUNY in particular has a problem. It has a fervently anti-Semitic campus culture that the administration has failed to constructively address, so the university has difficulty producing public events that don’t deteriorate into Soviet anti-Zionist rallies.
Columbia University will forgo live student speeches at its main university-wide commencement. NYU plans to have pre-recorded student remarks at school-specific ceremonies.
The reasons behind these decisions vary by university—but only slightly.
At NYU, last year’s student commencement speaker added unapproved remarks to his speech, in violation of school policy, just so he could spread modern blood libels.
Columbia canceled its 2024 commencement entirely because its campus had devolved into a psychotic circus in which students were taking members of staff hostage, assaulting them, spray-painting Nazi graffiti and taunting the building workers as Jew-lovers. Last year, it brought back the commencement just so that students could drown it in boos.
CUNY, meanwhile, has quite the record. In 2023, its commencement speaker launched into what school administrators later called “hate speech.” The year before that, they’d had Nerdeen Kiswani, who could make Khaled Meshaal sound like Mother Teresa, and who was once caught on video moving to light a student’s Israeli shirt on fire—while the student was wearing it.
The students at these institutions think the new commencement restrictions are violations of their free-speech right to hop around on stage sounding like an anti-Zionist version of Ratko Mladic. Perhaps a court will agree.
But the larger problem seems to be that prominent American universities seem unable to produce decent adults. The schools should be able to expect students to speak without reciting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That they cannot is an indictment of American academia across the board.
The fact that the students are surprised by this is another mark of shame for the schools. Gothamist reports: “Yusha Abdul Hakim, who will be graduating at the law school’s May 21 commencement, said CUNY’s decision not to allow a speaker is particularly ‘hypocritical’ for a school where students are taught to defend constitutional rights. ‘ This is our full-time job doing research, looking at the news … and we’re being told, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.”
Well, that’s 100 percent true. These students don’t know what they’re talking about. Whose fault is that? I suppose it’s a combination: The schools have a responsibility to educate their students, but the students have agency too.
Indeed, by the time you get to college, you should be informed enough about the basic history of the world to reject some demented “settler-colonialism” critique of Jews living in Judea. You should find it embarrassing that the school employs conspiracy-addled geopolitical flat-earthers to teach important subjects. You should also know, even as a teenager, that a movement that revolves around the dream of pushing 7 million Jews into the sea is a poor fit for a person who isn’t a sociopath.
When neither students nor professors realize the above, you’ve got a badly rotting institution. Commencement speeches, naturally, will reflect that.
Source:
www.commentary.org
