RALEIGH — Here we go again.
So a washed-up media personality comes to town, gives a strident political speech, draws some cat-calls, and then leaves controversy in his wake.
You could write this kind of story in most college towns in North Carolina and elsewhere virtually every week if you wanted to. The debate has grown predictable. On the one side, you have the university administrators and their defenders. Craven, smug, vaguely clueless about the outside world, these folks mutter “freedom of speech” like a Gypsy incantation and expect to stupify any protesting yokels. Their job is to please the constituency groups that actually matter to them: the overwhelmingly left-wing faculty, the sports-crazy alumni, and (for the public institutions) egotistical lawmakers who like to feel important and who control the universities’ purse strings.
On the other side, you have conservatives, taxpayers, disaffected alumni, and the news media looking for something entertaining to write about. While they frequently nail the political bias of the campus speaker with accuracy — it’s hard to miss if you aim to the left — they also sometimes overlook the fact that campuses ought to have radical speakers on a regular basis. It does stir things up. The free exchange and debate of ideas is critical to the educational process. And having to defend a controversial radical brings out the worst in the university-administrator crowd, always good for a chuckle.
Two problems crop up. Number one, and this should be obvious, debate and diversity actually require at least two points of view to be expressed! Conservatives face numerous obstacles in bringing their speakers onto campuses. University-organized events are rarely designed to balance the various views expressed in at least rough approximation. (I don’t just mean having a token conservative panelist, not that I would have any idea what that was like.) If the roster of speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, and other schools was populated with people of truly varying viewpoints, the conservative fascination with the latest Angela Davis or Cornel West sightings would subside.
The second problem is one of decorum. Here’s where N.C. State and Chancellor Marye Anne Fox went wrong earlier this month when former TV personality Phil Donahue was invited to give the commencement address. I think that they should have known ahead of time that Donahue, the obnoxious blowhard who married “That Girl,” would be constitutionally unable to restrain his political proclivities. There’s a reason why much of the N.C. State community is still buzzing about Donahue’s speech. It’s not because they haven’t heard liberalism expressed shrilly before (keep in mind that we’re talking about a college here). It’s because this was a graduation ceremony. It was a time for celebration and good-natured well-wishing. It wasn’t a time for tirades.
Tar Heels have nothing to feel good about on this score. While the 2003 commencement speaker at UNC-Chapel Hill, Bill Cosby, reportedly did an excellent job, I remember an incident a few years ago where then-faculty member Michael Eric Dyson got up to give a commencement speech, insulted and cursed at the audience, and then protested about his “free speech” during the ensuing furor. Then, as now, freedom of speech has nothing to do with the case. There’s no constitutional right to be invited to speak anywhere to anyone. Nor are universities required, by law or custom, to stand aside and let ceremonial speakers say and do whatever they want.
Chancellor Fox has been properly critical of Donahue since the event, but handled things poorly at the event. So did some of the students in attendance, who should have just sat on their hands rather than booing. Addled liberals such as Donahue actually like to be booed, as it gives them 1960s flashbacks, and are thus best just greeted with a stone silence. To them, it’s the kiss of death.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.