A controversial commencement speaker at Boston College decried by the prolife movement as an abortion proponent was welcomed with open arms at the Catholic institution’s graduation ceremony Monday, receiving a standing ovation and an honorary degree after his address to the Class of 2013.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny – who has introduced a bill that essentially legalizes abortion – gave the keynote address as planned, this despite protests leading up to his appearance by a coalition of prolife groups, as well as a prayer vigil during the ceremony.

Even the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, boycotted the commencement due to Kenny, noting in a statement about the pending legislation in Ireland that: “The Irish Bishops have responded to that development by affirming the Church’s teaching that ‘the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of life is always morally wrong’ and expressed serious concern that the proposed legislation ‘represents a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law.’ ”

But apparently, Catholics at Boston College can’t get enough of the Irishman, and have no qualms with his efforts:

The Boston Globe reports:

He earned a standing ovation from the class of 2013, ­assembled on the football field, and the estimated 20,000 guests who filled the bleachers behind them. School officials said past BC commencement speakers have rarely received standing ovations.

The story went on to quote a few parents and grads who dismissed the controversy as folks just trying to politicize the event.

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It’s not uncommon for African Americans to criticize President Barack Obama’s job performance, and the latest example of that comes on the heels of his commencement speech at Morehouse College on Sunday.

During his keynote address at the historically black, all-male college in Georgia, Obama called for better family values among the black community and personal responsibility over complaints about racism.

During his speech, Obama told the grads to “recognize the burdens you carry with you, but resist the temptation to use them as excuses.”

“That’s what being an American is about. Success may not come quickly or easily. But if you strive to do what’s right; if you work harder and dream bigger; if you set an example in your own lives and do your part to help meet the challenges of our time, then I am confident that, together, we will continue the never-ending task of perfecting our union.”

But some African Americans on Monday called that message tired and insulting, saying it was rhetoric meant to pander to white people.

“Trevor Coleman thinks it’s time for President Obama to get a new speech for black audiences,” The Washington Post reports. “The personal responsibility finger-wagging, delivered most recently Sunday at Morehouse College’s commencement, is getting old. … Coleman, a former speechwriter for former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, said … he was disappointed that Obama almost always defaults to the clean-up-your-act message when talking to predominantly black audiences.”

The Post goes on to quote Leola Johnson, an associate professor and chair of the Media and Cultural Studies Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.,  who said Obamas’ speeches “are actually not aimed at black people.”

“They’re actually for white people, liberals especially,” she said.

However, Obama’s speech was different that his usual “you didn’t build that” pro-government, pro-socialism rhetoric, as The College Fix reported Monday. If it was meant to pander to anyone, it was probably the conservatives he’s been accused of harassing and targeting via the IRS. But we digress.

The Post goes on to report:

Kevin Powell, an activist based in New York who travels the country encouraging black men to take responsibility for their lives, said he has no problem with Obama challenging the black community, but . . .

“You also have to challenge the system, just as you challenge the people. It’s not an either/or,” said Powell. …

A. Scott Bolden, a Washington lawyer and Morehouse graduate, and Coleman, the former speechwriter and Detroit-based writer, offered finger-wagging lectures of their own.

“It’s interesting that President Obama is always asking black people to take responsibility for themselves,” Bolden said. “It would be really nice if he’d take responsibility for black people in his second term.”

Apparently, Obama’s message fell on deaf ears.

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Florida parents – you’re gonna love this one.

While you’re paying about $6,300 a year (or $22,300 for out-of-state tuition) to send your children to University of Central Florida to learn, well – something they can turn into a career – they’re learning how to (drumroll please) make genitals out of Play-doh.

The watchdog group Campus Reform reports that:

Staff at a public school in Florida apparently led a sex workshop last month in which students were instructed on how to sculpt replica genitals out of Play-doh. …

The event called, “Finals? That blows,” also featured a condom hunt and a speech from a sex expert.

How would young people learn any marketable skills without college nowadays? UCF students can now put “artistic/proficient in sculpting” on their resumes.

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Via Red Alert Politics:

A National Student Clearinghouse study reveals that college enrollment has declined 2.3 percent this spring compared to last year as more Americans skip the academic route and jump directly into the workforce.

The biggest drop in college enrollment rates was among adult learners at for-profit and public community colleges, which saw a drop of 8.7 percent and 3.6 percent respectively, as reported by USA Today.

According to an article by Inside Higher Ed, however, the accelerated drop in enrollment is not uncommon, as rates often decline or remain stagnant as the economy begins to pick up.

It’s “a bit of a return to normal” according to Doug Shapiro, the executive director of the non-profit National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which released the report.

Read more.

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Three new books published by academic presses use lofty intellectual theories to describe strange deviant sex (kink, bondage, and erotic masochism) as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Camile Paglia has reviewed the books for The Chronicle for Higher Education. It’s not pretty:

Gender-theory groupthink leads to bizarre formulations such as this, from Weiss’s introduction: “SM performances are deeply tied to capitalist cultural formations.” The preposterousness of that would have been obvious had Weiss ever dipped into the voluminous works of the Marquis de Sade, one of the most original and important writers of the past three centuries and a pivotal influence on Nietzsche. But incredibly, none of the three authors under review seem to have read a page of Sade. It is scandalous that the slick, game-playing Foucault (whose attempt to rival Nietzsche was an abysmal failure) has completely supplanted Sade, a mammoth cultural presence in the 1960s via Grove Press paperbacks that reprinted Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal essay, “Must We Burn Sade?”

Weiss is so busy with superfluous citations that she ignores what her interviewees actually tell her when it doesn’t fit her a priori system. Thus any references to religion or spirituality are passed by without comment. She also refuses to consider or inquire about any psychological aspect to her subjects’ sexual proclivities, no matter how much pain is inflicted or suffered. She declares that she rejects the “etiological approach”: Any search for “the causation of or motivation for BDSM desires” would mean that “marginalized sexualities” must be “explained and diagnosed as individual deviations.” To avoid any ripple in the smooth surface of liberal tolerance, therefore, flogging, cutting, branding, and the rest of the menu of consensual torture must be assumed to be meaning-free—no different than taking your coffee with cream or without. (These books approvingly quote BDSM players comparing what they do to extreme but blatantly nonsexual sports like rock climbing and sky diving.) Weiss’s neutrality here would be more palatable if she were indeed merely recording or chronicling, but her own biases are palpably invested in her avoidance of religion and her moralistic stands on economics.

Read the full review here.

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At Northwestern University over the weekend, a few students tried to organize a party with a “Spirit Animals” theme: “Come celebrate spring quarter with NBN this Saturday at our annual spring party! Theme: Spirit Animals. Everyone has a kindred spirit animal , so come sport your cat ears, wings, and unicorn horns with us.”

But, wouldn’t you know it, someone got offended.

Someone posted a complaint on the group’s Facebook page:

“Ack, please don’t make this the theme. It’s culturally appropriative and could cause some trouble.”

Immediately, the group caved and cancelled the “spirit animal” theme. That’s the kind of almighty instantaneous power that the ultra-PC crowd holds on college campuses.

And just in case you’re wondering what “culturally appropriative” means in the first place–it means, basically, that it’s not politically correct for white kids to “appropriate” the images, ideas, words, or themes of a favored minority group–in this case, presumably, Native Americans. Not even for an innocent and celebratory purpose.

That’s what happens when political correctness takes hold.

Our campuses today are overrun by PC-police who tell others what the can and cannot say, do, or think. “Cultural sensitivity” becomes a big bludgeon to squash the free speech rights of others, and to turn innocent, insignificant ideas into thought crimes.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

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This past week Northwestern University played host to its first ever “Social Justice Week.”  Several campus groups worked together to plan a week of events on subjects varying from sexual assault in the military to Northwestern founder John Evans’ role in the historic Sand Creek massacre.  Though organizers claimed the week was a culmination of tensions and student-led movements for inclusion and diversity, many students saw the events as furthering campus divisions, rather than bridging them.

Of particular concern for many students was the week’s demonstrated bias against the state of Israel.  Of the fifteen originally scheduled events, four were organized by the group Students for Justice in Palestine, all of which had a distinctively anti-Israel stance.  While one such event was cancelled, three events continued including a commemoration of Nakba Day, which declares the founding of the Jewish State a catastrophe, and a screening of a film that linked Israel with Apartheid South Africa. Citing the one-sided nature of the week’s events, several groups actually retracted their sponsorship of either single events or the week as a whole.

Also problematic for many students were the organizers’ rules for selecting participating student organizations. According to their Facebook page and comments from the organizers, only groups fitting the following characteristics were approached for co-sponsorship: the group “seeks fair (re)distribution of resources, opportunities, and responsibilities; challenges the roots of oppression and injustice; empowers all people to exercise self-determination and realize their full potential; and builds social solidarity and community capacity for collaborative action.”

Of the thirteen groups listed on Northwestern’s Center for Student Involvement website as “social justice organizations,” only two were approached for co-sponsorship.  Furthermore, while Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Cultural Students Association were active participants in the week, student organizations Wildcats for Israel, Hillel, CRU (Campus Crusades for Christ), and the Sheil Catholic Center were never approached for participation.  This is despite publication of an “interfaith discussion on Palestine,” which featured a controversial anti-Israel Rabbi speaking on one of the holiest days of the Jewish year, Shavuot.

Many of the group leaders saw the idea of a Social Justice Week as a welcome step in promoting their causes at Northwestern. Though most of the events were sparsely attended, the additional publicity the groups received by banding together helped bring attention to their respective causes increased the organizations’ visibility.

One of the principal organizers of the week, Northwestern student and Students for Justice in Palestine member Moira Geary told the Daily Northwestern before the week began, “There are a lot of student movements being organized on campus and the unifying process created by organizing and executing this week will provide greater education about, involvement in and support for each group involved.”

Others, however, saw the lack of attendance and participation as the week’s divisive nature impairing its effectiveness.  Brian Lasman, a Northwestern Sophomore, lamented, “I want a Social Justice Week to bring the student population together over some of the most pressing issues of our generation.”  He continued, “Social Justice Week addressed some relevant, important issues, but it deliberately excluded a large part of the student population.  It became an event which divided the community, instead of bringing it together. In my opinion, it therefore failed to bring out exactly what it was intended to do.”

Fix contributor Alex Jakubowski is a student at Northwestern.

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After pursuing a career in academia for nearly a decade, a young post-doc has decided to leave behind her dream of becoming a professor. Rebecca Schuman has published a kind of  “farewell letter” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which she details the disappointment that lead her to abandon her career path, and in which she compares the academic world to “a cult.”

My tenured colleagues sometimes get offended when I compare academe to a cult—of course they would, they’re in the cult! Still, they must recognize the similarities. In literary studies, for example, we have our own lingo—French-theory jargon, which is nearly impossible for outsiders to parse. We have quasi-scriptures from worshiped nondeities—Derrida, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty—which we recite, from memory, to win arguments.

And we re-educate our ranks using the cult playbook. First, isolate graduate students from the outside world, not by physical barriers but by monopolizing their time with the requirement to read thousands of pages of obtuse prose nobody on the outside cares about. Then break the students down, via evisceration of their naïve early essays, and thereafter by comprehensive exams and the dissertation process. Finally, shortly before they defend their dissertations, call them “brilliant” and fill their heads with dreams of R1 glory. Make sure they know there is no other noble path outside the Life of the Mind…

The Chronicle uses so many pseudonyms for a damn good reason, which ties into the final way in which academe resembles a cult: abject terror of being shunned. We low-ranking academics believe we will be shunned if we dare offend the sensibilities of someone who might be in a position to give us a job or tenure someday—you know, everyone. Shunning would mean the irretrievable loss of our entire selves, because our identities are now inextricably wedded to our academic worth…

Speaking of not getting a job, you may be wondering why I am so comfortable running my mouth. It’s simple: I have very little to lose. I’ve decided that four years of anguish intense enough to induce a fugue state was enough, so next year there will be only 149 applicants per position in my field. You’re welcome.

Read the full article here.

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A group of prolife nonprofits has planned a massive protest set for today outside of Boston College’s graduation ceremony to protest its pro-choice commencement speaker.

Ireland’s Prime Minister, the pro-choice Enda Kenny, is scheduled to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree from the Catholic institution.

But Students for Life of America, Live Action, the Catholic Action League, Operation Rescue, and other prolife groups hope to lodge a vocal and visual complaint against allowing Kenny to take to the podium and speak to grads.

“If Boston College won’t stand for the preborn at its graduation ceremonies, we will,” a website representing the groups states.

The protest will include a prayer vigil and press conference on a sidewalk near the college’s alumni stadium.

“Make no mistake about it … Kenny supports allowing abortion, on-demand,” states the website, NotAtBC.com.

According to the coalition: “Kenny and his governing party Fine Gael have gone against their election promises and introduced abortion legislation that would legalize abortion in Ireland under the guise of preventing the suicide of pregnant women. As there is no gestational age limit to the measure, it would mean abortion on demand, by threat of suicide, through all nine months of pregnancy.”

“We know what legalized abortion has done to our nation, and the results are devastating. But, before he makes abortion legal in Ireland for the first time, Kenny has been invited by Catholic leaders in America to speak at Boston College’s commencement ceremonies and receive an honorary … degree,” the website states.

“For any college to honor the man who would usher in the mass death of Irish preborn children is simply unconscionable. But under no circumstance should a Catholic university allow Prime Minister Kenny to speak, as his support for legal abortion will be responsible for taking the lives of thousands of women and children, in direct violation of Church teaching.”

The coalition of prolife groups has already asked its supporters to thank Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, for boycotting the commencement.

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In his farewell address to Yale University, retiring president Richard Levin took to the podium before the graduating class of 2013 over the weekend and told them – the sky is falling.

More specifically, he went on a bizarre tangent about global warming during his baccalaureate commencement address, telling grads “our insufficiently restrained emission of carbon into the atmosphere is on track to require the relocation of coastal populations around the world and cause severe draughts in once fertile agricultural regions, within your lifetimes.”

Relocation of coastal populations! Within your lifetimes! Better pack your bags, grads.

He went on to say:

Earlier this month, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in over three million years. This level is more than 40 percent higher than concentrations prevailing before the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-18th century.  Now is the time for stronger economic incentives, stricter performance standards, and large investment in carbon-free energy technologies.  The strategy for such investments should take full account of lessons of the massive 1960s commitment to space and defense technology, which gave us high performance materials, computers, the Internet, and global leadership in science and technology that propelled scores of industries and created millions of jobs.

The theme that unites all the elements of the program I am suggesting to you is this: we need to take the long view.  If we fail to invest in education, infrastructure, and innovation, we shortchange the future.  If we fail to rationalize entitlements, your generation’s prosperity will be jeopardized.  If we fail to address the challenge of global warming, your children and grandchildren will live in a world burdened by the enormous costs of coping with environmental disruption and human dislocation.

Global warming to cause – human … dislocation? Right.

Goodbye Dr. Levin, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

CLICK HERE to read a transcript of his entire speech to the graduating class at Yale College.

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