Rice’s responsibility in the lies leading to the Iraq war and the implementation of the unprecedented torture policies under the Bush administration.” I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.ĭespite Rice’s belated withdrawal, Rutgers faculty and students went ahead with a planned, six-hour teach-in on May 6 because, as three participating professors wrote, “we concluded that the need remained for a scholarly exposition of Dr. Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time…. Bowing out of the May 18 graduation as of May 3, Rice’s statement on her Facebook page read in part: Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. She did not explain why her controversial performance in office wasn’t as obvious to her in February as it became in May. She said she was “honored to have served my country,” without mentioning any specifics. Rice did not engage issues like war or torture in her withdrawal statement, arguing instead that the crucial issue was the party-time nature of commencements. Officially, Rutgers showed no interest in truth, history, morality, etc. To invite her to address the Rutgers graduating class, and then to award her a doctor-of-laws degree, is a travesty of all the ideals the university embodies. In a lucid indictment of Rice’s apparent criminality, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education the day before Rice withdrew, Rutgers history professor Jackson Lears wrote: Rice sanctioned the use of torture and has continued to defend it even after a top aide warned that she and her colleagues were violating the law. Students and faculty objected to Rice for her participation in lying her country into war in Iraq, and even more so for her defense of widespread American use of torture in the “global war on terror.” An online petition by a 1991 Rutgers grad collected 694 signatures opposed to Rice, and campus petitions gathered hundreds more. They cannot insist on consensus or popularity. Free speech and academic freedom cannot be determined by any group. In a letter ironically foreshadowing his bald hypocrisy on free speech and academic freedom, Rutgers president Robert Barchi had written in March: We cannot protect free speech or academic freedom by denying others the right to an opposing view, or by excluding those with whom we may disagree. The president refused to talk with them and they dispersed when Rutgers threatened to arrest them. On April 28, some 50 students staged a sit-in at the Rutgers president’s office. The Rutgers administration held firm, Rice kept quiet. Student and faculty objections to Rice started in February and continued to grow for months. Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed). And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements. He American Condoleezza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. What would you expect from powerful people, personal courage? Condi Rice, Christine Lagarde: Cowardice at Commencementīy William Boardman, Reader Supported News
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