EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: ‘Why are you being so damn reasonable now?’
An Amherst College professor recently lamented how too many university graduation speakers are being “disinvited” due to some controversy or another.
Austin Sarat’s piece in The Conversation is actually one of the more sensible ones on that website in a long time; in it he references Morton Schapiro, recently cancelled from speaking at Georgetown Law in part because he “holds controversial, Zionist, and harmful opinions.”
Other cancelled graduation speakers noted by the professor include former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey in 2019 (for being pro-abortion), talk show host Michael Smerconish in 2024 (wrote in 2004 the TSA should “deliberately target Arabs and Muslims for searches”), author Salman Rushdie last year (at the behest of a school’s Muslim Student Association), and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker (who encouraged traditional wife roles) in 2024.
Sarat — rightly — speaks well of the efforts of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and notes he’s written on the First Amendment and concerns over college free speech.
But I remain skeptical. For instance, in the latter link (an op-ed in The Hill), Sarat (pictured) writes “What happened at UCLA is just the latest in a long series of similar incidents that have roiled campuses and fueled the Trump administration’s campus crackdown” (emphasis added).
Indeed, despite such incidents … lookout for the Orange Man’s reaction!
What’s more, late last year Sarat was behind an Amherst faculty resolution which read
Resolved that, in light of escalating threats to democracy and the rights of citizens and non-citizens in the United States, the faculty of Amherst College affirms its belief that those threats endanger our educational mission. We join with others who are also speaking out, defending freedom, democracy, and the rights of all, regardless of their political allegiances, religious, gender, and racial identities, or immigration status.
Yes, suddenly we should be worried about “defending freedom” and “democracy” because a new type of (Republican) politician who won the electoral and popular vote is doing precisely what he campaigned on.
And where was Sarat’s concern for the First Amendment when a student at his school was hassled for covering a ridiculous student program which featured “students perform[ing] mock sex acts including oral sex, masturbation, and group sex” at a campus chapel?
All this reminds me of the scene in “The Bounty” where during the mutiny Mel Gibson (Fletcher Christian) yells at Anthony Hopkins (William Bligh) “Why are you being so damn reasonable NOW??”
There’s another great film reference I referenced in early ’24 when various pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel student protests were running wild on college campuses.
I really do wish the current predilection of the disgruntled to vacuum up someone’s multi-decade social media history for something that is likely to piss off at least one person did not happen. If someone didn’t find that tweet by Rutgers alumnus Rami Elghandour, he’d have spoken at that engineering school’s convocation.
But I find it hard to feel bad for the guy as those who spread word of his offensive tweet (and it was as offensive as it was stupid — that Israel was training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners) were merely playing the game progressive college students have long perfected.
MORE: No sympathy: College administrators and professors finally reap what they sow
