Let me enthusiastically applaud Robert Cummings' protest of his class's putative "slap in the face" at his Commencement. He's right. No Commencement anywhere should have to suffer the "sturm und drang" of "some bleeding heart university professor" rodomontading about the Sept. 11 attack or exalting the sociological sterility of multiculturalism.
But Cummings is uninformed about this university professor's Commencement background. I have delivered seven Commencement addresses, received honorary doctorates at five of them and got a standing ovation at all seven.
And I am a "bleeding heart" who, like Francis Bacon, tries to be "a citizen of the world" whose "heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them." A Commencement, however, is a time to revisit a class' academic achievements, athletic teams' successes (male and female!), serious weekend partying and the many-splendored experiences that confirm why this wonderful University authenticated their decision.
Naturally, we all yearn for UNC-Chapel Hill's national recognition. But a University professor as Commencement speaker would not ensure that distinction. In fact, in the 10 years I have been here, The New York Times in its one-page summary of Commencement speakers has never included UNC-Chapel Hill.
I shamelessly confess I was honored to be mentioned as one of two possible university speakers. (This feminist heartily endorses the beloved, nationally acclaimed Doris Betts.)
But, as a journalist with 43 years experience, I know that only a "big, big name" would generate national publicity while informing, or entertaining, but still making all of us proud. So, I immediately sent the names of a dozen possible Commencement speakers to Senior Class President Ben Singer: Secretary of State Colin Powell (hoping he would replicate George Marshall's historic 1948 commencement address at Harvard); Howell Raines (Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor of The New York Times for his eloquent articles on his Alabama home life and the black woman who helped raise him); Lani Guinier (distinguished Harvard Law School professor); Barbara Bush (that's right -- a very classy lady and only the second woman in history to be the wife and mother of a president -- America owes her); media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Pulitzer Prize-winning sassy humorist Dave Barry; former astronaut Sally K. Ride; Justice John Paul Stevens (the Supreme Court's most eloquent justice); Mel Brooks (outrageously witty and successful Broadway producer); Elton John; Joyce Carol Oates; Salman Rushdie; Gore Vidal (witty, prolific and eloquent scholar on politics). And my absolute favorite (and old friend), America's No. 1 musical satirist and political humorist, Washington, D.C.'s and PBS-TV's popular Mark Russell. (Students would dig him, and parents would love his deliciously irreverent equal opportunity "take no prisoners" rhymes.)
Since Robert Cummings sunk to argumentum ad hominem about my class, I will not dignify his subliminal testostronic racism. Instead, my literary hero Samuel Johnson responded more authoritatively when he told a critic with similar cognitive deprivation, "I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding."
Chuck Stone Walter Spearman Professor
