동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: Corey Robin - I know this headline and the story it tells are...

2025-05-18

Corey Robin - I know this headline and the story it tells are... | Facebook

(1) Corey Robin - I know this headline and the story it tells are... | Facebook

I know this headline and the story it tells are terrible, a sign of just how bad things are and how much worse is to come. But, still, you have to laugh. Here we are, in the middle of this great rallying of society on behalf of beleaguered universities fending off this tetchy administration, and the leaders of NYU, so terrified of this sweet beautiful student, their commencement speaker, who had the temerity to refer to "the atrocities currently happening in Palestine," and, so, naturally, is having his diploma revoked.

NYU declared today that it "strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views." And just in case anyone was unclear about how upset NYU is, they added this: "NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”

Oh, poor audience, poor parents, poor students, subjected to remarks like these, having their moment stolen.

Like I said, you have to laugh.

I think back to all those giants who spoke at graduations past, how lionized they were, by the media, by university leaders, by presidents, for what they said, speaking truth to power and all that. There was...

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978, saying this: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days....Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society."

Susan Sontag, declared a pariah for telling the truth after 9/11, invited to Vassar, where she said this: "It’s hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid." And this: "Despise violence. Despise national vanity and self-love.” And this: “Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don't have passports, don't live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even once flown in a plane.”

Or Salman Rushdie, still in the flush of the fatwa, invited to speak at Bard, where he said this: "Since I have come to believe that such defiance is an inevitable and essential aspect of what we call freedom, I thought I might commend it to you. For in the years to come you will find yourselves up against gods of all sorts, big and little gods, corporate and incorporeal gods, all of them demanding to be worshipped and obeyed - the myriad deities of money and power, of convention and custom, that will seek to limit and control your thoughts and lives. Defy them; that's my advice to you. Thumb your noses; cock your snooks. For, as the myths tell us, it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed their humanity."

Oh, but the students, the parents, the Israelis.

May be an image of 2 people and text that says "He Denounced the Gaza War at Graduation. N.Y.U. Withheld His Diploma. The university says that student's remarks condemning "genocide" were not approved and that he "violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules." Listen to this article 4:35 min Learn_more Share full article Logan Rozos delivered graduation speech on Wednesday at New York University that invoked the plight of Palestinians."

All reactions:

1.1K

125 comments

1.2K shares

All comments

Hunter Heyck

NYU looks very, very pathetic.

View all 3 replies

Deborah Emin

The audience applauded. If you watch the video, he was a hero!

View 1 reply

Jonathan Rochkind

I never before heard the theory that commencement speakers aren't expected to express their personal views.

What... are they there for?…

1d
Like
Edited

Erik Singh

The cowardice and betrayal of elite institutions on this issue after decades of preaching peace and justice is so transparently pathetic you have to laugh.

Patrick Timmons

Who on earth would want to study or teach at NYU after this?

View all 11 replies

Tim Holmes

It’s just so pathetically cowardly and self-abasing

Jess Mabli

Can someone explain to me what the legality of this is? Can they actually deny a diploma to a kid who potentially paid over

$300,000 for this education?

View all 7 replies

Joel Hernandez

This is unbelievable. Where has even the most basic commitment to courage gone?

View all 4 replies

Sam Brody

Another school should give him an honorary BA.

Jess Mabli

Fuck NYU. I’m disgusted.

Pamela Miller Hornik

I was there. Shocked at the over the top reactions to a student speaking out.

View all 2 replies

Qamar-ul Huda

So speeches, OP-Eds in student newspapers, personal blogs, the books we read or the books in libraries are more of a threat to our national security than cabinet members using Signal to share military operations & classified information with family members?

Ariela Gross

shame, shame, shame

Kathryn Levy

I guess all the students who cheered him don’t exist. Remarkable.

View 1 reply

Cathy D Thomas

We had to suffer Volcker, chief of double-digit inflation; a far more harmful speaker, on the whole.

View 1 reply

Adrienne Lamb

Barron Yrump (typo, not fixing) is a student at NYU. Seems they feel under the thumb.

Thank you for sharing the excerpts above. I am inspired. …

View 1 reply

Jess Mabli

Pls Corey Robin tell me why I should have any hope for this bullshit country?

Bryan P. Walsh

America: The Corporation

Sabra Ewing

Truly terrifying that it’s come to this level of pathos!

Jess Row

As an NYU professor who’s seen this repression day in and day out for years, I’m just hoping this is the moment when the public humiliation, the sheer national and global disgust towards our leadership, begins to take a toll. I’m not optimistic, but ma…

Cathy Kemp

for Sontag, and Rushdie.

Janice Williamson

NYU admin’s actions and words are repulsive. I hope someone reaches out to admit that student to grad school or give him a high-paying job. He is a hero for doing what should be done. A truthteller.

Daniel J. Walkowitz

At my High School graduation in 1960 the principal instructed me not to speak of “peaceful coexistence.” I nodded and then left it in. The sky did not fall.