The recent appointment of Michael Bloomberg to speak at Harvard’s commencement has generated massive backlash from some students due to the ‘stop-and-frisk’ police procedures that were put into place during his tenure as mayor of New York City. Yet choosing Bloomberg as commencement speaker does not mean that Harvard is supporting his policies, just as the selection of Bill Gates in 2007 did not signal an endorsement of Windows over any other operating system (and like selecting Fareed Zakaria in 2012 did not mean that Harvard believed the Buddha was born in India). A commencement speech is not a policy statement on behalf of Harvard, and his selection as commencement speaker is nothing more than recognition of his prominence as a politician, a businessman, and a philanthropist.
The real problem, meanwhile, is that this backlash is representative of a broader cultural problem at Harvard, and probably many other colleges in the Northeast. We proclaim that we are open and accepting: diverse in our views and disparate in our opinions. Yet that standard only seems to apply to the opinions of the socially liberal and political left. Take a poll of the average dining hall table at Harvard, and you would find few voices against abortion or in support of conservative economics. We rarely have to deal with opinions we disagree with, because they are such a minority that they can simply be dismissed as “those nutty conservative views” of the Republican Club and the Anscombe Society.
I cannot say even for myself that I support everything that Bloomberg did during his tenure as New York’s mayor. Does that mean he will not be a good orator? Does that mean he will not get up to the podium and give a thought-provoking speech? A genuinely great commencement speaker is one that will provoke our thoughts, not just appease us with opinions with which we already agree. That is what Harvard, not to mention college in general, is supposed to do for us.
Bloomberg’s selection is already doing precisely this. People are picking up the battle against stop-and-frisk and bringing this important dialogue back to the main stage. What, then, is the trouble with Bloomberg giving the commencement speech? Harvard is not saying this policy is perfect, or that it is even remotely correct. Harvard is merely recognizing him as a leader whose ideas and stories are worth listening to; a public figure who will provoke discussion, debate and argument.
If Harvard – and other colleges across the United States – become so intellectually closed off that they only hire speakers with whom everyone already agrees, they are failing in their duty to open the minds of young people. A liberal arts education cannot be about only hearing the liberal voice: by definition, it should be inclusive of all thoughts and perspectives, eventually teaching its students to how to decide for themselves with whom they agree and disagree. Let us not hold our education hostage to our desire to be eternally liberal.