POV: A Lesson from BU’s 150th Commencement | BU Today – Boston University

On May 21 I officiated at my 18th and final Commencement ceremony as president of Boston University. It was an unruly affair. David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery and our alumnus, was our Commencement speaker and an honorary degree recipient, invited long before the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began on May 2. Not surprisingly, there were protesters both outside and inside our ceremony, as the leaders of the media business are at the focus of the labor dispute.

Some graduating students stood and turned their backs to the speaker and displayed signs. There were organized chants imploring Mr. Zaslav to pay his writers. For a university committed to free speech, protests are appropriate and common. The right to protest and freely express strongly held convictions is essential to sustaining the liberal democracy that we enjoy.

The protesters were a minority among the 23,000 people assembled on Nickerson Field. Students and guests applauded and cheered Mr. Zaslav as he described his life journey and offered advice to the graduates. Others listened respectfully. As it should be, Boston University is a noisy place of frequent, vigorous debate and discussion and where no one monolithic point of view dominates.

But what we witnessed on Nickerson Field during Commencement veered, regrettably, in a different direction. A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav. I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex. In that era, shouting the words that I heard from the field would be the precursor to a fistfight. I cant imagine how Mr. Zaslav felt hearing these obscenities directed at him. I have apologized to Mr. Zaslav for the behavior of these students.

The attempt to silence a speaker with obscene shouts is a resort to gain power, not reason, and antithetical to the mission and purposes of a university.

Our students were not picking a fight. They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses. The hundreds of virtually identical protest emails we received in my office in advance of Commencement came with an explicit cancel hashtag, indicating an aim to prevent Mr. Zaslav from speaking. The attempt to silence a speaker with obscene shouts is a resort to gain power, not reason, and antithetical to the mission and purposes of a university.

The students who were appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive to Mr. Zaslav were entitled to attend Commencement because they were being awarded degrees that they earned from Boston University. They sought to make a statement, out of passionate conviction, but in the moment, they forgot that in a liberal democracy, personal autonomy and freedom of speech come with responsibilities. One responsibility, particularly in an institution for which freedom of speech is the oxygen that sustains our mission, is respect for the speech rights of others. The deliberate effort to silence a speaker is at odds with this fundamental value. I am disappointed that some members of our graduating student body seem painfully unawareor perhaps even hostile tothis idea.

I am also disappointed at the insensitivity to our many guestsespecially parents and grandparentswho came from far and wide to celebrate the success of a cherished relative. The willingness to spoil the occasion for these literally thousands of guests to not only make a point, but also literally prevent the speaker from conveying his message, was painful and embarrassing to witness. I would stress that from my vantage pointand that of othersthe individuals behaving badly constituted a small minority.But that fact does not diminish my disappointment.

On reflection, it seems to me that the incivility on Nickerson Field is indicative of the divisions in our country. People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media. In our specific case the shouters infringed on the rights of othersto be heard or, more simply, to celebrate a milestone for a new graduate in a ceremony not disfigured with obscenities. We must do better and be a place where freedom of speech and the vital instrument of lawful protest can coexist and foster every individuals sense of belonging.

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POV: A Lesson from BU's 150th Commencement | BU Today - Boston University