Shots In The Dark: The Kids Don't Just Want to Have Fun

Thursday, April 20, 2024

The Kids Don't Just Want to Have Fun

Reading this article in the Crimson, I feel that there is some hope for the world: the graduating students at various colleges are disappointed with their uninspiring commencement speakers.

At Harvard, students don't like Jim Lehrer; at UPenn, students are underwhelmed by Jodie Foster; at Yale, students are eh about Anderson Cooper; and at Stanford, students don't love the idea of Tom Brokaw.

I think this dissatisfaction is appropriate; Tom Brokaw will give the same speech he's given a million times (remind you of anyone?); Anderson Cooper will talk about hurricanes and promote his forthcoming book; Jim Lehrer will—well, I don't know what Jim Lehrer will do. Put people to sleep, I'd guess. Nice guy and good journalist, but still....

(I think Jodie Foster might actually be kind of interesting.)

But Harvard students—who exactly do you think chose this Commencement speaker? I'll give you one guess: the same person who chose Bob Rubin, Tim Russert, and Ernesto Zedillo....

¶ 8:59 AM

Comments:

Good try, Richard. The students themselves chose Russert; he was the Class Day speaker, not the Commencement speaker. Summers actually chose actor John Lithgow last year.

# posted by Anonymous : 8:13 PM

Listen, I welcome the corrections—I make plenty of 'em, so don't be shy when telling me if I've made a mistake (what am I saying, clearly you're not)—but you're dodging the larger point: Summers chooses the Commencement speakers. There used to be a committee that did this. But, if you've read Harvard Rules, you know that after the Zayed Yasin controversy, Summers changed all that...

And you know what? Now that I think about it, I'm still basically right, in the sense that after Ali G speaking at Class Day, there's no way that the students chose Russert independently. And if I recall correctly, wasn't there even some hint of that in the Crimson?

# posted by richard : 9:03 PM

Who in the world would chose Anderson Cooper as a commencement speaker for anywhere, much less at Yale. How ridiculous!

# posted by Anonymous : 12:18 AM

Oops, Richard. The Zayed Yasin controversy led Summers to shake up the committee that selects student orators: University Marshal Richard Hunt "retired", committee chair Richard Thomas was later "rotated off", and adviser to any president within his sight David Gergen was embedded into that committee. Those speakers have nothing to do with the afternoon Commencement Speaker, over which Summers indeed exercises control, as his predecessors have done.

# posted by Anonymous : 12:28 AM

Okay. So you're saying to me that Summers controls the student orator, picks the Commencement Day speaker, and you're not disputing—are you?—that the students who picked Tim Russert as their class day speaker felt pressure from above. (How explicit or how specific, I don't know.) My point was that Summers tookcontrol of the Commencement exercises in order to avoid speakers he doesn't like, choose people he thinks are interesting and/or who are his friends, and generally retain tighter control over the University.

Are you disagreeing with that?

P.S. Of course you are right about the student orator—quite embarrassing to me that I got it right in the book and wrong in the blog. Senility approaches.

# posted by richard : 7:53 AM

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