I think you’re misunderstanding what was canceled at Columbia. University-wide commencement was canceled, not graduation for individual schools. Parents will still see their kids get their diplomas.
Bill, I’m responding to your article on universities canceling commencements. Not in regard to your point, but rather to the terms you are using. By using descriptors such as “Leftist elites”,
“Haughty disdain of the left” or
“Idiocy of the kids protesting” you end up furthering Elyse Stefanik’s narrative. That these protestors are Elites and the real and good Americans don’t react to what’s happening in Gaza, or that the protestors were ignorant. This just pushes the MAGA agenda further right. If you listen to Robert Reich who is a college professor and who queried a multitude of fellow professors across the country, you will hear a different story. One, that the majority of student protestors are motivated not by hate or antisemitism or violence, but rather by their heartfelt reaction to the gut wrenching destruction and death their country is supporting in Gaza. I would just suggest that by name calling the young protestors, you are only adding to the division building around this issue. I’m not understanding how you can think students who were accepted into Columbia “want” to spend their time away from studies and any brief R&R they can grab. You went to a challenging college, so you should understand how hard they worked to get there.
Anybody who wants to be a Trump VP, by that desire automatically disqualifies themselves to take on the presidency if necessary. As if Trump himself were not enough reason to vote for Biden.
And what's with Biden as the "chaos candidate?" Do people serious not remember the four years of Trump chaos, incompetence and corruption? Also what's with the idea that Biden has not brought enough normalcy back? He oozes normalcy
I frequently disagree with William Kristol but I do agree with him about commencements. I attended my high school commencement because the nuns said they'd withhold our diplomas if we didn't show up, and they meant it. I did not attend my commencement for my BA, MBA or PhD. But, as a retired professor, I attended too many commencements to even think about. Besides the large spring commencement there is usually another, small-scale ceremony in December because not everyone finishes their degrees in the spring and there are rules about who can "walk" if they haven't finished. They all blend together, it was required attendance, it's usually hot in the spring in the regalia for an outside ceremony, heaven help you if it unexpectedly rained or had recently rained. My hair is very straight and the tam that I wore never stayed in place. Rarely do you get a speech that is worth listening to. We once had Hal Holbrook as commencement speaker (this was late in his career) and he must have been having a bad day because all he did was bad mouth the generation of the graduating class (totally grumpy old man, things were better in his day, blah, blah). Luckily, the advent of the iPhone saved me because I could download a book to read and, since everyone had a phone in their hands, you weren't noticed. But, I never forgot that the parents, grandparents, siblings and students were there to celebrate their accomplishments and I always tried to make certain that everything went well (as Associate Dean in a business school) and that everyone was happy and proud. The day wasn't about me. It's very unfortunate that some students and their families and friends will not be able to experience their college commencement. My daughter didn't have a college commencement because of COVID and they were going to have Nancy Pelosi as commencement speaker. She did get a great graduate school commencement though, and it was important to her.
I would think it depends greatly on the size of the school. HS is one thing, college is another. Columbia actually didn't cancel commencement - what they cancelled is the overall one that supposedly includes something like 8,000 students - they can't seriously expect to have thousands of students individually named. That's insane. They're still holding individual commencements for their various schools - there are 20 of them under the Columbia umbrella - I'm thinking like the school of business, the school of journalism, etc.
Very True. Many colleges and universities have one big ceremony with the President/Chancellor, other administrators, Board of Regents, and the main commencement speaker. The President/Chancellor officially confers the degrees and then everyone goes to a different location for their school/college ceremony where they receive their diploma and walk across the stage. This how we did it at the university I was at for >25 years. We also had to do undergraduate commencement on Sunday, with graduate commencement on Saturday. The graduate students didn't want to attend the undergraduate ceremony or the large ceremony and very few showed up. This change increased the number of graduate students who attended commencement. Of course, it was also another commencement that administrators and faculty had to attend.
Bring back Charlie!! Kristol has destroyed Morning Shots and clearly is an anti-anti-trumper who loathes anything not specifically halfway-hard-right....
It's so obvious that Kristol is just dying to go back to being a right-wing provocateur. His disdain for anything even slightly left of center is patent. Mark down this prediction: Kristol will be a MAGA promoter one day soon. He will say he doesn't like Trump personally, mind you, but the Left forced him to join the MAGA movement and accept Donald J Trump as his savior.
too many words on commencement ceremonies. One left wing blogger (who I have never heard of) tosses off a couple sentences and we are "treated" to all these words.
Well, you never heard of him, and I never heard of him before today, but if you DuckDuckGo him you'll find that enough people have heard of him to give him a career doing this.
And denying this many hardworking students one of the key milestone ceremonies of their lives is a big deal, with or without that pr|ck Menaker to make fun of them.
If you see it as a big deal that's your choice. I don't myself. I know, I know, covid and they missed their high school graduations. Stuff happens; that's life.
Ohio State had their commencement ceremony last weekend. It was very peaceful (no protests) but a woman did fall to her death at the beginning of the commencement.
I am watching NYT "live" coverage of the trial in NYC. I do not understand the defense for TFG taking pains to be able to argue that he did not have a sexual "encounter" with Stormy. It seems to me to be irrelevant if it did or did not happen. Bottom line, he was so concerned about the allegation harming his election chances that he paid to kill it and phonied the books to cover it up, thereby violating New York law and Federal law.
Please, please, please stop conflating dumb leftist behavior with Trumpism. One is annoying, rude and nonsensical, and the other is, was, and continues to be a threat to our democracy. Not the same ballpark, not the same sport.
I didn’t presume anything Jane. I made an observation, you defended Welker which is fine. I wasn’t trying to create controversy or argue this point. It reflects my viewpoint.
There are important issues which are never discussed. To me policy isn’t necessarily more important, but we all know that Scott and the others don’t have an original thought in their brains, when they are part of MAGA or speaking on its behalf.
They will only regurgitate approved talking points, and after four years in which the entire party has been manipulated to believe the election was stolen, do you really expect a differ response?
I’d rather hear how they plan to handle the economy, or at least ask questions about subjects that are the underlying issues of this election.
Asking whether you will accept the election results, ten times, in ten different ways, in one minute, isn’t one of them. IMHO.
Agree wholeheartedly with Bill re: commencements. And you are correct that Will Menaker's haughty (even if ironic) statement about other human beings is REALLY counterproductive, particularly when the possibility of getting Trump back in office again is the stakes and that kind of shit can turn voters' heads.
What is sad that 4 years ago high school commencement ceremonies were cancelled. 4 years later these students are now having college commencement ceremonies cancelled.
If you need a jolt of the reality in simple terms, might I suggest Cree Hardegree at Cree's Substack. The note from yesterday basically boils down the election to what it is and what isn't going to change.
Something is wrong with Noem. She seems to need attention, of any kind and it appears she needs money. This NRA thing, the teeth commercials, now the book. I don't think she is going to be VP no, but I think she has an excellent chance of being head of DHS or the FBI.
I think you’re misunderstanding what was canceled at Columbia. University-wide commencement was canceled, not graduation for individual schools. Parents will still see their kids get their diplomas.
Bill, I’m responding to your article on universities canceling commencements. Not in regard to your point, but rather to the terms you are using. By using descriptors such as “Leftist elites”,
“Haughty disdain of the left” or
“Idiocy of the kids protesting” you end up furthering Elyse Stefanik’s narrative. That these protestors are Elites and the real and good Americans don’t react to what’s happening in Gaza, or that the protestors were ignorant. This just pushes the MAGA agenda further right. If you listen to Robert Reich who is a college professor and who queried a multitude of fellow professors across the country, you will hear a different story. One, that the majority of student protestors are motivated not by hate or antisemitism or violence, but rather by their heartfelt reaction to the gut wrenching destruction and death their country is supporting in Gaza. I would just suggest that by name calling the young protestors, you are only adding to the division building around this issue. I’m not understanding how you can think students who were accepted into Columbia “want” to spend their time away from studies and any brief R&R they can grab. You went to a challenging college, so you should understand how hard they worked to get there.
Anybody who wants to be a Trump VP, by that desire automatically disqualifies themselves to take on the presidency if necessary. As if Trump himself were not enough reason to vote for Biden.
And what's with Biden as the "chaos candidate?" Do people serious not remember the four years of Trump chaos, incompetence and corruption? Also what's with the idea that Biden has not brought enough normalcy back? He oozes normalcy
I frequently disagree with William Kristol but I do agree with him about commencements. I attended my high school commencement because the nuns said they'd withhold our diplomas if we didn't show up, and they meant it. I did not attend my commencement for my BA, MBA or PhD. But, as a retired professor, I attended too many commencements to even think about. Besides the large spring commencement there is usually another, small-scale ceremony in December because not everyone finishes their degrees in the spring and there are rules about who can "walk" if they haven't finished. They all blend together, it was required attendance, it's usually hot in the spring in the regalia for an outside ceremony, heaven help you if it unexpectedly rained or had recently rained. My hair is very straight and the tam that I wore never stayed in place. Rarely do you get a speech that is worth listening to. We once had Hal Holbrook as commencement speaker (this was late in his career) and he must have been having a bad day because all he did was bad mouth the generation of the graduating class (totally grumpy old man, things were better in his day, blah, blah). Luckily, the advent of the iPhone saved me because I could download a book to read and, since everyone had a phone in their hands, you weren't noticed. But, I never forgot that the parents, grandparents, siblings and students were there to celebrate their accomplishments and I always tried to make certain that everything went well (as Associate Dean in a business school) and that everyone was happy and proud. The day wasn't about me. It's very unfortunate that some students and their families and friends will not be able to experience their college commencement. My daughter didn't have a college commencement because of COVID and they were going to have Nancy Pelosi as commencement speaker. She did get a great graduate school commencement though, and it was important to her.
I would think it depends greatly on the size of the school. HS is one thing, college is another. Columbia actually didn't cancel commencement - what they cancelled is the overall one that supposedly includes something like 8,000 students - they can't seriously expect to have thousands of students individually named. That's insane. They're still holding individual commencements for their various schools - there are 20 of them under the Columbia umbrella - I'm thinking like the school of business, the school of journalism, etc.
Very True. Many colleges and universities have one big ceremony with the President/Chancellor, other administrators, Board of Regents, and the main commencement speaker. The President/Chancellor officially confers the degrees and then everyone goes to a different location for their school/college ceremony where they receive their diploma and walk across the stage. This how we did it at the university I was at for >25 years. We also had to do undergraduate commencement on Sunday, with graduate commencement on Saturday. The graduate students didn't want to attend the undergraduate ceremony or the large ceremony and very few showed up. This change increased the number of graduate students who attended commencement. Of course, it was also another commencement that administrators and faculty had to attend.
Bring back Charlie!! Kristol has destroyed Morning Shots and clearly is an anti-anti-trumper who loathes anything not specifically halfway-hard-right....
It's so obvious that Kristol is just dying to go back to being a right-wing provocateur. His disdain for anything even slightly left of center is patent. Mark down this prediction: Kristol will be a MAGA promoter one day soon. He will say he doesn't like Trump personally, mind you, but the Left forced him to join the MAGA movement and accept Donald J Trump as his savior.
Is that before or after Taylor Swift marries Travis Kelce at halftime?
"I didn't want to, but His will was too strong."
too many words on commencement ceremonies. One left wing blogger (who I have never heard of) tosses off a couple sentences and we are "treated" to all these words.
Well, you never heard of him, and I never heard of him before today, but if you DuckDuckGo him you'll find that enough people have heard of him to give him a career doing this.
And denying this many hardworking students one of the key milestone ceremonies of their lives is a big deal, with or without that pr|ck Menaker to make fun of them.
If you see it as a big deal that's your choice. I don't myself. I know, I know, covid and they missed their high school graduations. Stuff happens; that's life.
did Bill actually just claim Will Menaker is the voice of the left ?!? Jeezus... are you kidding me?
Ohio State had their commencement ceremony last weekend. It was very peaceful (no protests) but a woman did fall to her death at the beginning of the commencement.
I am watching NYT "live" coverage of the trial in NYC. I do not understand the defense for TFG taking pains to be able to argue that he did not have a sexual "encounter" with Stormy. It seems to me to be irrelevant if it did or did not happen. Bottom line, he was so concerned about the allegation harming his election chances that he paid to kill it and phonied the books to cover it up, thereby violating New York law and Federal law.
Please, please, please stop conflating dumb leftist behavior with Trumpism. One is annoying, rude and nonsensical, and the other is, was, and continues to be a threat to our democracy. Not the same ballpark, not the same sport.
I didn’t presume anything Jane. I made an observation, you defended Welker which is fine. I wasn’t trying to create controversy or argue this point. It reflects my viewpoint.
There are important issues which are never discussed. To me policy isn’t necessarily more important, but we all know that Scott and the others don’t have an original thought in their brains, when they are part of MAGA or speaking on its behalf.
They will only regurgitate approved talking points, and after four years in which the entire party has been manipulated to believe the election was stolen, do you really expect a differ response?
I’d rather hear how they plan to handle the economy, or at least ask questions about subjects that are the underlying issues of this election.
Asking whether you will accept the election results, ten times, in ten different ways, in one minute, isn’t one of them. IMHO.
My apologies if I offended you…:)
Agree wholeheartedly with Bill re: commencements. And you are correct that Will Menaker's haughty (even if ironic) statement about other human beings is REALLY counterproductive, particularly when the possibility of getting Trump back in office again is the stakes and that kind of shit can turn voters' heads.
What is sad that 4 years ago high school commencement ceremonies were cancelled. 4 years later these students are now having college commencement ceremonies cancelled.
If you need a jolt of the reality in simple terms, might I suggest Cree Hardegree at Cree's Substack. The note from yesterday basically boils down the election to what it is and what isn't going to change.
Something is wrong with Noem. She seems to need attention, of any kind and it appears she needs money. This NRA thing, the teeth commercials, now the book. I don't think she is going to be VP no, but I think she has an excellent chance of being head of DHS or the FBI.