{"id":5969,"date":"2020-06-06T16:04:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T20:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=5969"},"modified":"2020-06-07T05:39:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T09:39:28","slug":"commencement-speeches-are-not-free-speech-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/commencement-speeches-are-not-free-speech-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement Speeches Are Not Free Speech Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Senator Tom Cotton–who recently argued on Twitter for giving protestors “no quarter”–is unhappy <\/a>with Wichita State University Tech.\u00a0 That school decided to uninvite Ivanka Trump from giving a commencement address.<\/p>\r\n

His outrage is basically the same blather we hear every year about this time.\u00a0 Predictably, he argued for the importance of hearing “different views,” and the canceled speaker herself brought up “viewpoint discrimination”<\/a> and free speech on Twitter.

But that completely misunderstands the Bill of Rights. Someone like former Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, is free to speak about his beliefs, his past, his hopes and dreams, his view of foreign affairs, whatever he likes anywhere he wants to. And he has. He\u2019s a public figure and can appear on TV talk shows, can publish Op-Ed pieces, blogs, essays and books.\u00a0 So can anyone in the current administration, and Ms. Trump posted her address on YouTube.<\/a>

But the First Amendment isn’t about guest speakers who are typically paid handsomely for their time. It specifically refers to government interventio<\/em>n in individual expression. That\u2019s just not the case where a speaker proves controversial and campus protests arise.

Just as foolish as invoking \u201cfree speech\u201d: the noxious moralizing about how students should be open to a free expression of ideas.\u00a0 After four years of college, you don\u2019t want a lecture in the middle of a grueling, dull, long ceremony in the heat\u2013or in the middle of a pandemic–and you shouldn\u2019t get one.\u00a0 Some schools have even had two speakers from opposite political sides of a question to \u201cpromote open discussion.\u201d What a joke.

Commencement speeches aren\u2019t seminars or workshops with Q&A. They\u2019re supposed to be inspiring and entertaining. Funny, if possible. They\u2019re throwaway, forgettable, a moment\u2019s ornament as Edith Wharton put it in another context. And that\u2019s okay, because graduation is about transitions, about moving on, about celebration. The ceremony isn\u2019t an intellectual milestone for anyone involved. It\u2019s not meant to go down in history, and the speaker sure isn\u2019t Moses coming down from the mountain top.

Academic freedom doesn\u2019t suffer and nobody\u2019s rights are interfered with if a celebrity gets invited to speak to a graduating class of students, and is suddenly uninvited. Free exchange of ideas? Please. The only real exchange is the speech the speaker gives and the check that speaker leaves with or gets in the mail–plus free publicity.

Lev Raphael is the author of the mystery State University of Murder<\/em><\/a> and 25 other books in many genres.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senator Tom Cotton–who recently argued on Twitter for giving protestors “no quarter”–is unhappy with Wichita State University Tech.\u00a0 That school decided to uninvite Ivanka Trump from giving a commencement address. His outrage is basically the same blather we hear every year about this time.\u00a0 Predictably, he argued for the importance of hearing “different views,” and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[584,273,2297,2296,2293,277,2294,271,2291,2299,2295,2292,2298],"class_list":["post-5969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech","tag-academia","tag-academic-freedom","tag-campus-crises","tag-campus-speakers","tag-commencement-addresses","tag-commencement-speakers","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-ivanka-trump","tag-speakers","tag-tom-cotton","tag-wichita-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5969"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5991,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions\/5991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}