Commencement Recap

It’s that time of year again. Parents, relatives, siblings and friends traipse happily onto football fields and into auditoriums to finally hand over their children to the adult world. They bravely endure the pomp, circumstance, and ubiquitous, but inevitable political correctness of graduations across the country. Congratulations to all classes of 2006! Here is my platitude—Carpe Diem!

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum, so to speak. Our beloved commencements seemingly passed this year without much liberal bias fanfare. President Bush offered resounding, compelling and enduring remarks to WestPoint grads. Our First Lady spoke at Roger Williams University. Thankfully, no one threw food at Ann Coulter, not that she would be asked to don a mortar board. Ward Churchill was missing too.

O.k., yes, there were three or four highlights of note: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, one of the most accomplished women of today, had to contend with some testy folks at Boston College; John McCain was heckled for his speech at The New School. And, certainly, N.Y. State Comptroller Alan Hevesi had to eat crow for opining Senator Chuck Shumer was the man “who will put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.” He apologized and thus emerged unscathed. Finally, Jodi Foster invoked the ever intelligent musings of rapper Eminem in her University of Pennsylvania commencement speech. Seemingly, all of our lucky scholars pulled through their ordeals untouched by relatively unbiased events, or did they?

One college commencement speech was worth exploration. At Lehigh University, liberal bias emanated slowly like a leaky tire. The address by Ken Burns was not an all-out blowout, but ended up being a flat nonetheless. Notably, a Lehigh reporter called the commencement address, “exhilarating,” “a speech…[that] weaved together tales about Abraham Lincoln, playwright Arthur Miller, and the Beatles.” Lehigh grads were told to “do something that will last and be beautiful.” Yes, Ken Burns; the award winning progenitor of Baseball, The Civil War and Lewis & Clark, as well as other documentaries.

Thus, at the onset, this speaker looked promising. After all, he was the accomplished, likeable historian type. He suggested Abe Lincoln was one of our greatest presidents. He said of Lincoln, “He offers a vision, an utterly American vision.” He rightly insisted the graduates read, read, read and write. He told them that books were more important than modern-day machines, e.g., computers. He told them to visit Appomattox. He told them “to insist on heroes.” I was silently chanting, “Go, Ken, Go.” Then, it happened; apoplexy and rigor mortis set in when Burns launched another typical, non-compelling academic salvo aimed directly at the uninformed, unsuspecting student.

Burns’ point tacitly warned all of us to “be on guard” against the encroaching and omnipresent, “arrogance and belligerence that more resembles the ancient and now fallen empires of our history books rather than a modern, compassionate nation.”
He told the proud graduates “Do not confuse success with excellence.” Burns noted, “The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that ‘careerism is death.’”

To continue, his next statement teetered on the cutting edge of new scholarship. You know, something we have never heard before. Burns discussed America’s “hypocritical” policies. Hypocrisy, he said, “manifests itself by those whose false faith has steadily eroded the once mighty edifice erected by our Founders between church and state, suggesting orthodoxy so terrifying in its certainty that the once shining example we set for the world for more than two hundred years has become tarnished. Be on guard.”
Let us get this straight. Burns told the audience, “He was in the business of history.” I’m not, but even I know—no “wall of separation” was ever “erected” by our Founders. How many students, however, knew that?

Michelle Natale is a teacher, member of AIA and resides in Northern Virginia.