HANDOUT/GETTY IMAGESInternational Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde not wanted.Riding the high horse of imagined moral superiority, the students and faculty of leading universities are driving away voices that fail to meet their standards of political correctness. This closing of the American mind is an embarrassment to institutions based on the free expression of ideas.
On Sunday, seniors at Smith College will celebrate their graduation day without scheduled commencement speaker Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund.
Lagarde rescinded her commitment after hundreds of students, faculty and alumni of the all-female school signed an online petition that lambasted the IMF as a force “strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.”
Think about that. Lagarde, one of the world’s most powerful and accomplished women, is not welcome on a campus whose ethos centers on the empowerment of women, all because Smith’s political arbiters disagree with IMF policies aimed at eradicating poverty through investment in the world's poorest nations.
Smith’s intolerant display comes on the heels of a vote by Rutgers University faculty to condemn the selection of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a speaker. Rice rightly bowed out.
Just last week, former University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau pulled out of Haverford College’s commencement after petitioning students demanded an apology for his handling of an Occupy Wall Street protest .
And the grand prize for intolerance goes to Brandeis University, which invited the Islam-criticizing activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree — and then just as quickly revoked the offer.
Don’t blame just the students and faculty, whipped into a frenzy with the ease of a click to create a change.org petition.
Equally responsible are university officials who stampede away from perceived risks and refuse to do their jobs as the adults on campus. Too many institutions of higher learning are so cravenly in thrall to tuition-paying customers that they are squandering their legitimacy as centers of free and independent thought.
Ali put it best in the remarks she never had a chance to utter at Brandeis:
“We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/smug-speechless-article-1.1795788#ixzz32BXCuoxK
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