Commencement speeches aren’t for political grandstanding

A student speaker was recently disciplined by NYU for giving an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian speech at his school’s commencement ceremony. NYU apparently rejected the idea that the address should express the personal political views of a student speaker on a divisive public issue. It also argued that the student had misrepresented the subject matter of his speech to the university.

This incident is hardly unique. It is part of a recurring controversy about the role of speakers at graduation ceremonies. One may support or condemn this particular student’s statements about the war in Gaza, but NYU’s understanding of the role of student and faculty speakers at commencement is correct and deserves our support.

Put simply, the podium granted to these commencement speakers doesn’t belong to the speaker. It is a platform designed for a specific purpose and event — the celebration of the graduation of students.

Two important constituencies need to be taken into account. One, of course, is the graduating seniors, who hold differing views on various public issues. What unites them for this event is their academic achievement and the respect it deserves. Speakers do not communicate respect by condemning the beliefs of some of the graduates, who have no opportunity to respond, as misguided or evil.

But the second constituency is even more important. Most of the seats at a commencement are filled with proud parents and family members, who of course also hold differing views on public policy disputes. Many of these parents have worked tirelessly to create the opportunity for their children to attend and graduate from a university. They deserve special praise for their sacrifice and contribution to their children’s success. They don’t attend the commencement to be lectured to or to have their deeply felt views and values denigrated.

I know something about what graduation ceremonies mean to parents. My father did not graduate from high school, but at the age of 65 he flew on a plane for the first time to attend my college graduation.

As a retired law professor, I also know something about what graduation ceremonies mean to parents. I have attended dozens of law school graduations. When the ceremony was over, I spoke to as many family members of graduates as I could. It is hard to find the words to describe the pride they experienced on that day or to describe the respect they deserved.

The students who received diplomas did so as a result of the support they received from their families. No student or faculty speaker, however confident that speaker is of the moral rectitude of his or her beliefs, should do anything to alter the nature of the commencement ceremony or to diminish their experience.

I also know something about speaking at graduation ceremonies. Four times during my career, I was selected by the graduating class to be the faculty speaker at my law school’s graduation.

I approached this honor and task with humility. I have lots of strongly held beliefs — I have expressed them forcefully in op-ed pieces published in The Hill and elsewhere — but speaking at a graduation ceremony was different. I made sure that the purpose of the event and the audience I was addressing, rather than my own views on divisive issues, determined the content of my remarks.

I learned to make sure to acknowledge the pride and contributions of parents and other family members in attendance. In my most recent talks, I paraphrased the words of Isaac Newton, who attributed his success to “standing on the shoulders of giants” and told the graduates they should look to their families and recognize how much of their success was the result of having stood on the shoulders of giants.

Describing my perspective to other academics, some have argued that a talk that fails to take sides on the important issues of the day would be just empty or simplistic rhetoric about nothing much in particular.

I think this is mistaken. These academics might assume that speakers who deliver political polemics will be advocating views with which they agree. I doubt that liberal faculty, for example, would be so sanguine about a graduation speech that condemned abortion as murder, no matter how heartfelt that message was to the speaker.

More importantly, this argument assumes that there is nothing profound or meaningful that can be said about more basic principles and ideas that avoid directly addressing contemporary disputes. I disagree, though I concede that it takes more work to develop this kind of speech.

The focus of one of my commencement addresses was the idea that individuals can make a difference, that we are not entirely subject to forces beyond our control. To make my point, I described the Civil War’s Battle of Chickamauga, in which Gen. George Thomas was able to rally the defeated Union forces so that the Army of the Cumberland could escape annihilation. Those same Union forces would go on to win future victories, at Chattanooga and Atlanta, that were instrumental to Abraham Lincoln’s reelection. I then tied this battlefield illustration to famous legal cases in which individual plaintiffs had to step forward to challenge laws, and make legal history in doing so.

Recognizing that individuals can make a difference seems to me to be an important idea, not empty palp. Yet my talk did not apply that idea to a contemporary dispute. If anything, it discussed a significant idea that could be meaningful to everyone — which in my judgment is what a commencement speech should do.

Alan Brownstein is a professor emeritus at the University of California Davis School of Law.