Commentary: Commencement speeches should be open to diverse ideas

It’s that time of year again, in which colleges and universities invite prominent leaders, writers and thinkers to speak at spring graduations across the country.

But I’ve got a pretty good feeling that many of these would-be speakers don’t book their hotels and flights right away. This is because May is “disinvitation season,” a time where many colleges regularly rescind their invitations to various commencement speakers. The latest casualty is former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Albright was scheduled to speak at the spring commencement at Scripps College, which is located in Claremont. But last week, following a flurry of student anger and a potential boycott of the graduation by 28 of the school’s professors, the invitation was rescinded.

Apparently, a lot of people are unhappy with her tenure as secretary of state under President Clinton. This kind of “disinvitation” has become all too common.

I won’t start bagging on angry campus millennials and say that it’s all their fault. They receive enough criticism as it is. No, it’s a general habit of mind that I point a finger at. It’s an emotional stubbornness that dictates: If you can’t find your way to my viewpoint, then there’s going to be trouble. If you make me feel offended or slighted, then there may be consequences.

At Scripps, I don’t know if this silly reasoning ultimately falls on administration, faculty, students, or maybe some combination. But someone is to blame.

Scripps gives a superb example of how such gross intolerance goes beyond left/right politics. It’s no huge secret that Albright leans left. She has worked as a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic Party. She spent eight years with the Clinton administration.

But just two years ago, in 2014, conservative intellectual George Will was invited to speak at Scripps’ spring commencement, and he too was eventually dis-invited. That same year, Bill Maher — who is nothing if not a proud liberal — barely escaped a scathing campuswide petition attempting to derail his commencement speech at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, of all places!

And just last week Jason Riley, a conservative columnist, was disinvited by Virginia Tech from speaking at its spring graduation. The list is endless. And it’s embarrassing.

This inability to accept viewpoints that are challenging and different from one’s own has crept into academia. It has also, not surprisingly, found its way into social media. Social media just may be the real stick of dynamite underneath all of this.

It is obvious that any established politician, writer or public servant, at some point, will say or do something that certain people do not like. But in a day where one’s every word and every deed can instantly be pulled up on a smartphone, virtually nobody is safe.

And so, the recipe is simple: Seek out the offending comment or deed. Put in bold print, maximum font. Blast in online, to anyone listening. Wah-lah, you’ve got yourself the blueprints for a boycott. A protest. A disinvitation.

Enough with the “disinvites.” Telling someone they cannot come to something after inviting them is what 9-year-olds do after a playground dispute. Grow up and be the university students — and teachers — you’re supposed to be. Otherwise, we can’t see the difference between the university and that playground. Otherwise, why invite anybody to speak?

JOHN GLASS lives in Costa Mesa.