USC Cancels Commencement After Threats
USC Cancels Commencement Ceremonies Over Security Threats
The University of Southern California had announced a pro-Palestinian valedictorian – a top female student to give the valedictory or farewell speech. However, threats of violence caused cancellation of this speech and all other speeches by invited guests. Young people, and some not so young, had given four or more years of their lives and considerable money to reach this day, and thugs stole it from them and their families.
This is another signpost on the downhill road our universities are traveling. Like the German and Austrian universities of the 1930s, first opposition speakers are shouted down, they they are no longer invited, then opposing views are actively punished, then opposing speakers are physically assaulted. and finally the dark curtain of totalitarianism descends, only to be lifted when foreign troops march in.
But there are no American and British troops to march in and save us from ourselves, the way they saved the Germans and Austrians. Who will save us from our infatuation with totalitarianism? Good question. Like a woman infatuated with a "bad boy," we need an intervention.