Infinite MonkeysIt's that time of year again...time for colleges and universities to invite controversial figures to bore, er, address graduating students at commencement. I'll never forget—even though I wasn't actually there at the time—the hullaballoo that erupted at UC San Diego when President Bill Clinton and then Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich were invited to address an all-college commencement. Clinton used the occasion to announce his preposterous "conversation about race." Gingrich called for doubling federal spending on scientific research. Two years in a row, UCSD had quite the tempest in the old teapot. Students were irritated, mostly, at the security and media overexposure.
Well, there's controversial, and then there's downright repugnant. I'm thinking of a couple of colleges playing videos of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal at graduation several years back. Now, in a similar vein, Claremont's Pitzer College has invited Bernardine Dohrn to deliver its commencement address next month. Pitzer's website describes Dohrn as a "leading child advocate." But nowhere in the PR is there any mention of Dohrn's terrorist past as a leader of the Weather Underground.
The Claremont Institute's Ami Naramor has the sordid details, and draws a parallel to a recent case of campus "terror."
Update: Powerline's Big Trunk elaborates on Dohrn's terrorist past and sounds a call to action.
Posted by Ben at April 30, 2004 02:48 PM | TrackBack