Northwestern jettisons Wright

Complete fucking dicks. The distraction excuse is total backpedaling bureaucratic doublespeak bullshit. I’m thinking they just didn’t want to degrade the value of the honorary degree they gave Thomas Friedman in 2005.

The season’s already under way.

Northwestern has already pissed off its students by selecting Jerry Springer as their commencement speaker.

Why, it happens NU has just asked me for money again. They won’t get any, again. This is incredibly spineless. JP nails it.

Hmm. Here’s an idea: why not stop granting honorary degrees? And inviting external speakers to commencement ceremonies? They’re both pretty empty rituals, anyway, since decisions regarding both are virtually always made for pretty much every reason except academic merit or the degree to which the awardee/invitee has contributed substantively to the central mission of the university. And it would reduce exposure to this sort of embarrassing stupidity.

Or, alternately, schools could put honorary degrees on a roll by their development office and every visitor could take one, and commencement ceremonies could go whole-hog entertainment: how about Cirque du Soleil and grads on roller blades?

Here’s an idea: why not stop granting honorary degrees?

Too simple.

Jebus. I’m not exactly proud of my grad school alma mater right now. (They won’t be getting any money from me this year, either. And normally I do kick in my little pittance.)

This whole Wright thing is making me want to go all Seth Edenbaum on liberals. I’m sick of the way anybody on the left gets hammered for saying anything that strays even a foot off the tepid corporate-liberal reservation, while right-wingers can say any damn fool, vile and/or hateful thing that comes into their pointy heads with no consequences at all.

How come it doesn’t work that way with “weird” right-wing opinions?

I think “gz” (at 3:13am) is correct.

Steve Labonne asks at 3:17am, “How come it doesn’t work that way with weird right-wing opinions?” I think the answer is that it would, but that withdrawn invitations for honorary degrees are so rare it is hard to make comparisons. Also, my sense is that universities offer honorary degrees to conservatives much less often than liberals.

I know one thing: if I was refused a honorary degree I would’ve immediately committed hara-kiri.

My (largely rhetorical) question was by no means limited to honorary degrees, though, but addressed the much broader public discourse in the US. Noam Chomsky, for example, is a dangerous loon who is the constant object of ritual denunciation by liberals seeking to prove their “seriousness”, but all sorts of bloodthirsty, racist warmongers are thoroughly “respectable”.

If you don’t like it, perhaps you should move to a less right-wing country? Or at leat consider, as Brecht remarked, deposing the people and electing a new one?

Failing either option, you could just accept that your definition of extremist behaviour on the right is not accepted by a majority; whereas your perfectly reasonable and moderate position is, to them, indistinguishable from a willingness to wade up to your knees in their blood.

“Window” and “frame” are I think buzz-words that come into play here; rapidly followed by intimations of false consciousness, there being things wrong with Kansas, bitterness, and a return to the point I began with…

Steve, it’s because liberals generally actually agree with those bloodthirsty people. That’s the only explanation that makes sense. Imperialism in particular, has long been a project of liberalism as much as, or more so than, of conservatives.

Yeah, of course they’ll tell us that we just have to shut up until after the election, and then Obama will magically forget all his promises to AIPAC and his underhanded assurances to big business about trade and such. And when he predictably doesn’t and screw those who elected him, they’ll tell us he needs to get reelected, and then his VP needs to be elected,… and when sufficiently many people vote for a third party in 2020 because they are sick and tired of that crap they’ll get blamed for anything bad that happens the following 8 years. Rinse, repeat.

[dave, on the other hand, is a typical conservative in that he mistakes Henry Bienen (NU’s prez.) for “the people”.]

The most famous UK right-wing example is Margaret Thatcher being refused a honorary degree by Oxford.

This doesn’t seem analogous; Oxford didn’t withdraw an offered degree, they just didn’t make an offer. (And they had specific beefs with her policies about universities, right?)

Whereas the all-knowing Dave knows, why, he just knows (must be that good old right-wing intuition) that even though the voters installed a Democratic Congress in 2006 partly for the purpose, as clearly shown by polls, of ending the war, they really didn’t mean it in their heart of hearts and are actually perfectly happy that we’re still mired in Iraq. That’s why Congress has such high approval ratings (and warmonger-in-chief Bush is one of the most popular Presidents ever.)

Oh, wait…

dave, 1989: “The SED received 98% of the vote in the GDR elections. Clearly the people of East Germany have embraced Stalinism. Only liberal elitists, Trotskyist never-do-wells and other agents of imperialism would doubt that obvious fact.”

Point #1 is demonstrably not true of right-wing “prophets” in the US (examples: Robertson, the late and unlamented Fallwell, Hagee, Parsley). Their “poor treatment” has consisted of being major power brokers in the Republican party.

Mr Levy, Mr Levy–surely you meant Jerusalem? (If Nineveh gave honorary degrees, Jonah might have gotten one–although he would probably have declined it.)

Indeed. We Don’t Talk About That in polite company. It’s Divisive, you know.

I’ll give you the answer you were probably expecting. In Philadelphia there was about 20% statesman adulterating the mix, which is so much more than we expect nowadays that it was impressive. This episode, though, was 100% politician. Clearly he’s learning the realities of liberal politics, about which he seems to have been somewhat naive in the past.

A propos: I am wondering if those CT posters and commenters who were so impressed with Obama’s rhetorical skills during the first round of the Wright denunciation are as impressed with his performance on the second round?

This round was a reaction to a short-term explosive incident (Wright’s press conference) rather than a long-term bubbling up of rumormongering hitting a fever pitch (the original “Wright controversy”). I was mildly impressed by Obama’s original speech, and have since become so thoroughly irritated with the issue that Obama’s inelegant bluntness appealed to me more.

I find no evidence of Wright’s perspective in Obama’s copious policy recommendations, and can’t see that Wright has somehow tainted Obama’s psychology.

Regarding Northwestern: they cited controversy” as the reason for withdrawal? In other words, Wright’s statements and philosophy and service were sufficient to qualify him for a Northwestern degree in their eyes – none of that is problematic. The problem is the negative media attention that he has attracted, rather coincidentally due to the Obama presidential campaign.

So whatever body of work they intended to honor has been compromised by a burst of media hype? One way or another, that doesn’t speak well for the value of an honor from Northwestern.

It’s a real tragedy that all those left-leaning people magically vote for right-leaning politicians, blah blah blah

No, it’s a real tragedy that many of those left-leaning people don’t vote.

(This is not to say that all non-voters are left-leaning or any such silliness – but your snark would only make sense if there was something approaching 100% participation in the voting process.)

Bill Moyers has some good comments on Jeremiah Wright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47MsW9WIFR8

He rightly puts Wright’s statement on HIV in perspective. Even if he is mistaken on that, there was the case where medical officials let Black men die of syphilis while letting them believe they were receiving treatment.

“Point #1 is demonstrably not true of right-wing “prophets” in the US (examples: Robertson, the late and unlamented Fallwell, Hagee, Parsley). Their “poor treatment” has consisted of being major power brokers in the Republican party.”

Posted by Steve LaBonne

This bears endless repetition – Jacob Levy isn’t being deceptive; he’s just been so numbed by the current political situation that the repeated curses and lamentations of right-wing priests blend into the general background noise. As it does for most of us.

I have a hard time thinking of what it’d take for a right-winger priest to get ‘excommunicated’ by the media like Wright has been.

Matt, Matt, Matt – what ever are we going to do with you? Mrs (Dr.) Schlafly isn’t an America-hater; she’s ‘outspoken’, ‘controversial in some eyes (those which hate America!)’, or ‘possessing strong beliefs’. Besides, she has many friends in high places, which means that at least she’s not elitist :)

@4: Jerry Springer is not the commencement speaker for NU, but rather the speaker for the Law School graduation. Curiously, the commencement speaker at NU has not yet been announced, which is surprising, since generally the speaker is announced by the middle of the academic year, and it is now about six weeks to graduation.