Next week’s commencement ceremony at Rutgers University’s School of Engineering will have a missing voice—ironically, the voice of alum Rami Elghandour, the tech entrepreneur who was executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab. The administration disinvited Elghandour because “some graduating students would not attend their graduation ceremony due to concerns about the invited speaker’s social media posts” criticizing Israel.
Elghandour said his cancellation sent a “dangerous” message to students: “Don’t you dare speak up and say anything that you believe.”
Rutgers claimed that the ban “honors the celebratory spirit of the event to ensure that no graduate feels forced to choose between their personal convictions and a convocation ceremony”—unless, of course, a student has any personal convictions supporting free speech.
At the University of Michigan last week, brief praise of pro-Palestinian student activists in a graduation speech by history professor Derek Peterson resulted in global condemnation, a denunciation from the university president for his “hurtful and insensitive” comments, and a declaration by Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida about Michigan’s government funding: “it’s time to cut them off COMPLETELY.”
Beth Kuhel wrote in the Times of Israel, “When a tenured professor, acting in an official institutional capacity at a university-sponsored event, uses a platform of this magnitude in a way that is widely perceived as discriminatory toward a protected group, it raises not only institutional concerns but also civil rights implications.”
This is absolutely wrong, and we must completely reject these terrible, repressive theories of censorship. Political opinions are not acts of discrimination. Speeches at university-sponsored events are not official actions. Colleges must never be investigated by the government for allowing free expression.
One especially bad take came from The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait, who normally pretends to support free speech: “Much like the activists he praised, he was commandeering a common space intended to belong to the entire university community on behalf of a narrower, contested segment of it.” No, an invited speaker expressing opinions is not “commandeering a common space.” Words are not violence, and they are definitely not an occupation.
The “entire university community” is not entitled to silence anyone who disagrees with it. Should the audience at a commencement get to vote on what words and viewpoints will be banned at the event?
Some people wrongly imagine there is a commencement exception to the principles of free expression, believing that graduation ceremonies and similar events must be a safe space free from hearing controversial ideas. But universities committed to intellectual liberty do not impose safe spaces where ideas are banned. The commencement ceremony represents what is best about a college and its commitment to knowledge, and that includes the freedom of speakers to express themselves and challenge the audience.
Instead of demanding censorship by commencement speakers, we should be discussing how universities can use commencement events to bring more diverse voices to campus and encourage speakers to express more controversial ideas that challenge the audience rather than lobbing clichés at them. Ideally, colleges should have dueling commencement speakers who give contradictory advice to graduates, make the best arguments for their positions and then meet members of the audience afterward to continue the debate. But even if that’s unlikely, colleges must at least maintain their core commitment to refuse to censor speech. No prior review, no disinvitations, no punishments, no apologies for allowing free speech.
If you embrace censorship at commencement, there’s no logical stopping point after that. Almost any event has the money or the imprimatur of some part of the university behind it.
One consequence is the trend toward recording student graduation speeches, in order to ban any crimethink. The next step is banning speakers entirely to avoid the threat that anyone might be offended. And those who dare utter the wrong word will suffer the consequences. George Washington University banned alum Cecilia Culver from campus after she criticized Israel in her graduation speech last year.
It’s time to reject this regime of censorship and to declare that repression has no place at a university, not even at its dumbest ceremonies full of vapid phrases. We need to speak out for free expression at every event at every college.
