Picking a commencement speaker can be fraught with uncertainty. Colleges and universities want stimulating figures who will challenge and inspire graduates, but too controversial a choice can draw an immediate backlash from students, faculty members, and others in the community.
Rutgers University recently found that out with its ill-fated invitation to a former U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, whose selection sparked more than two months of criticism on the campus over her role in the Iraq War during the George W. Bush administration.
Secretary Rice, a professor of political science at Stanford University, backed out of the engagement over the weekend, but the controversy at Rutgers lingers. And the university’s situation is not unique—it’s just the latest example of a campus that found itself in discord over a commencement speaker, resulting in the speaker’s withdrawal or, worse, being disinvited.
“It is challenging for an institution to identify a commencement speaker who will appeal to a wide variety of groups and also provide thought-provoking remarks,” said William Walker, interim vice president for advancement resources at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
How tough is it? Just recently, Pasadena City College apparently flip-flopped twice on who would give its commencement speech: Dustin Lance Black, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and alumnus who became controversial after explicit images of him and a former boyfriend surfaced online? Or Eric G. Walsh, a public-health official and preacher who spoke against gay people in a sermon several years ago. Accounts differ over how Mr. Black was first invited then disinvited. But after controversy arose over Mr. Walsh, too, and he withdrew, the college decided to reinvite Mr. Black, who accepted the invitation over the weekend.
Silenced—or Not—by Protests
The ranks of notable figures who were invited to deliver inspirational remarks to graduating students but then declined amid protests grows every year. Last year there was Benjamin S. Carson Jr., the neurosurgeon whose opposition to gay marriage triggered protests that led Dr. Carson to withdraw as commencement speaker at the Johns Hopkins University. Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank, decided not to speak at Swarthmore College, his alma mater, after students lashed out at his support of the war in Iraq.
Controversial positions on political or social issues aren’t the only factors that might fuel protests against a speaker. The actor James Franco bowed out of an invitation to speak at the University of California at Los Angeles in 2009, apparently under pressure from a Facebook campaign led by students who said he lacked a big-enough name to speak at their commencement.
In many cases, though, colleges and their controversial speakers just ride out the storm—as President Obama did at the University of Notre Dame in 2009.
At least one institution that’s dealing with a speaker controversy this year appears to be on track to do the same.
The University of California’s Hastings College of Law has been getting some pushback over its choice of Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, as its speaker. Protesters have raised concerns about the number of people deported while Ms. Napolitano was U.S. secretary of homeland security.
Frank H. Wu, the Hastings College’s chancellor and dean, has acknowledged the protesters’ concerns about deportations, but has refused to rescind the invitation to Ms. Napolitano. “We do not shy away from the controversy that is integral to the progress of the law,” he said in a written statement last month. Ms. Napolitano’s speech, he said, “is an occasion that presents an opportunity to show what our core value of academic freedom means: our ability to respect one another and engage in the processes that have made America a diverse democracy.”
Robert Shibley, a spokesman for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which advocates for free speech on campuses, lamented the apparent trend toward shunning controversial speakers.
“There seems to be no room on a university campus for people who might have controversial things in their past or who are involved in controversial things currently,” he said.
A Texas Welcome
At least one university leader shares that view and hopes that Rutgers’s loss will be his institution’s gain. Just two days after Ms. Rice said that she would bow out of speaking at Rutgers so that she wouldn’t be a “distraction” at the ceremony, the chancellor of Texas Tech University, Kent R. Hance, sent her an invitation to speak at one of three graduation ceremonies coming up there over the next year. The first opportunity would be on August 9 at the university’s summer commencement.
Ms. Rice, who declined through her spokeswoman to be interviewed for this article, has not responded to Texas Tech yet. The spokeswoman said Texas Tech’s offer would “get the same consideration that is given to all commencement requests.”
Mr. Hance’s letter inviting Ms. Rice includes some pointed remarks that speak to the outcome of the protests against her at Rutgers and the debate over free speech on campuses.
“I believe if a university attempts to stifle free speech, it is the greatest injustice for the market of free ideas,” Mr. Hance wrote. “Institutions that do so are opposing the basic liberties that our great nation was founded upon.”
In an interview, Mr. Hance said that Texas Tech administrators have an obligation to find inspiring speakers. “Look at Condoleezza Rice, who grew up in the segregated South, and look at all that she’s accomplished,” he said. “I want people who have been successful in their areas, and I think she’ll get a warm reception at Texas Tech.”
Turmoil at Rutgers
The president of Rutgers, Robert L. Barchi, stood behind the New Jersey university’s invitation to Ms. Rice, even as he accepted her decision not to speak. But Ms. Rice’s departure didn’t end the university’s commencement-speaker woes. Instead, it upset a new group of students. In a letter to Mr. Barchi, the Rutgers College Republicans complained that a “hostile environment” had triggered Ms. Rice’s decision.
Shortly afterward, the university was fending off new criticism over its announcement of Ms. Rice’s replacement. That effort was marred by what Rutgers said was a simple mix-up. At one point, a former Rutgers football player, Eric LeGrand, who was paralyzed during a game in 2010, was asked to be the speaker. Then the university appeared to nix him in favor of a former New Jersey governor, Thomas H. Kean, whom it announced as its choice on Monday. The university said on Tuesday that it had planned all along for Mr. LeGrand to be one of multiple speakers at the event.
Mr. Shibley, of FIRE, predicts that the turmoil surrounding the selection of commencement speakers every year will eventually have an unwelcome drawback, particularly for future college graduates.
“Soon,” he said, “everybody will be doomed to listen to unexciting, boring speakers until the end of time.”
