« junebug memoirs | Main | new category »
May 17, 2006
the New School's spirit
Students at The New School have signed a petition to remove Senator John McCain as their commencement speaker.
Brian Lehrer interviewed a student senate and faculty member who support the petition. Here's a snippet:
Student: We're just extremeley disappointed to have someone like McCain who is very conservative in his voting record... our graduation is supposed to be a day of celebration and to have someone like that as an implicit endorsement from the university is really a contradiction to our education.
BL: What if the New School had invited a democratic presidential hopeful with whom you agree on some issues and disagree on some issues?
Student: That was actually the original idea was to have a speaker who was going to be Barack Obama who actually had to decline because of a scheduling conflict. I think that people would have been excited to hear the speaker... We're not always necessarily going to agree with any senator, because people who are politicians do run in the mainstream, but they wouldn't have necessarily completely contradicted most of our views and that of our education... Almost everyone in the New School, not in their individual views, but what the university was founded on in progressive views and questioning authority has really been instilled in us."
BL: What's the point of a university education if you come in with a political orthodoxy and are determined to leave with the same one?
Student: I don't think it's necessarily about indoctrinating students... It's very common that students at the new school have more left wing politics, but at the same time I don't think that is what our education is about. We are taught to question authority and that's what we're doing here.
You can listen to the whole segment here.
in the world | By charity | 10:49 AM