President Barack Obama has delivered some much-needed wisdom to recent university graduates about the need to keep their ears and their minds open to all points of view.
The president delivered a commencement address to Rutgers University graduates and lectured them about the “misguided” effort to prevent a former secretary of state from speaking to an earlier class of graduates.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-chides-rutgers-students-pressuring-203403559.html
Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak toĀ Rutgers grads in 2014, but she was pressured to back out of her scheduled appearance because students and faculty members disagreed with her involvement in the George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Obama said it was wrong to mount that kind of pressure against Rice.
He is correct to say so.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that I disagree with many of the policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or this country would be better served by not hearing a former secretary of state or not hearing what she had to say ā I believeĀ that’s misguided,” Obama said. “I don’t think that’s how democracy works best, when we’re not even willing to listen to each other.”
You go, Mr. President!
Universities should be places where all points of view are welcome. Does anyone really doubt that a former secretary of state has something valuable to say to students who are about to leave academia to make their way into the world?
This notion of academic snobbery has rankled me repeatedly over the years.
I’m gratified to hear the president of the United States tell these young graduates something they needed to hear, if they might not like hearing it.