Week of June 3, 2002
[Note: Some now-dead links have been removed from archived items.]

HIATUS: As I warned earlier, posting will be light this summer. Barring major world events, I don't expect to be posting again until after June 19. [Posted 6/4.]

GRADUATION DAY: For several weeks, Matthew Yglesias has been blogging against Harvard's decision to allot its student commencement speech slot to senior Zayed M. Yasin, who originally titled his speech "American Jihad." Yasin is the former president of the Harvard Islamic Society and under his leadership, the HIS held a fundraiser on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation, which the U.S. government says funds Hamas. HIS wound up giving the money to the Red Crescent instead, but Yasin continues to defend the Holy Land Foundation's work. (A background article from the Harvard Crimson is here.)

Andrew Sullivan mentioned the controversy last Friday, reverting to his old no-downward-links policy in a linkless mention of "those wanting to silence this young man." In response, Yglesias writes:

I'd also note that no one was trying to "silence" Yasin. As I've repeatedly argued this is distinctly not a question of free speech. One and only one undergraduate is permitted to speak in English at the Commencement ceremony so we obviously can't just say "well let's let all voices be heard" it's a dynamic that calls for the exercise of judgment and judging that any particular individual is not a good choice for the role is by no means equivalent to a desire to silence that person. I, after all, won't be delivering a Commencement oration, but as anyone who's reading this site can tell I've certainly not been silenced by anyone.

The problem with this distinction is that Yglesias was trying to exercise what's known as a "heckler's veto." Once a speaker has been chosen, throwing him off the platform because of public objections does constitute a form of silencing free speech. Until September 11, conservative speakers were the ones facing heckler's vetoes on college campuses. Now it's the Islamic left's turn. In either case, the precedents can be dangerous. (A discussion of an even more controversial case is here.) Harvard was correct not to drop Yasin from the program.

That said, Yglesias is quite correct when he writes:

I'm sort of more interested at this point, however, in seeing some kind of a change in the process or membership of the Standing Committee on Commencement Parts, since I think it should have been obvious to anyone that this speech should not have been picked in the first place and it's hard to escape the notion that some members of the committee were using their positions to push their own personal political agendas rather than thinking seriously about what would give the class of '02 the sort of Commencement they deserve.

It's painfully obvious that the half dozen faculty members who picked Yasin were more interested in shocking the bourgeoisie than in giving Harvard seniors a happy commencement that honored their achievements. Once again I have to applaud Princeton's wise graduation traditions: The university president, not an outside celebrity, delivers the main address and the main student address is given by the valedictorian. This year's valedictorian Lillian Pierce, a violinist and math major, gave her talk on the importance of play in intellectual inquiry, a theme that readers of TFAIE will find familiar. Focusing on the university and honoring intellectual achievement, rather than provocation, makes it unlikely that commencement will be hijacked for someone's political agenda. [Posted 6/4.]

GOING BACK: Speaking of Old Nassau, that's where I've been lately. Steve and I went to our 20th reunion.

The highlight of reunions festivities is the P-Rade, in which alums from the class of 1925 to the present march (or, in some cases, ride in golf carts) in black-and-orange costumes. If you think our costumes are strange, you should have seen the fancy duds on Dick Riordan '52 and George Shultz '42. [Posted 6/4.]

Buy Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies in hardback or paperback.