--- title: 'The Silencing' of the American College description: American college quads should be safe for free speech canonical: https://time.com/3890722/the-silencing-college/ author: Mary Eberstadt article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-26T13:55:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:13.025Z article:section: Ideas og:title: 'The Silencing' of the American College og:description: American college quads should be safe for free speech og:url: https://time.com/3890722/the-silencing-college/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Silencing' of the American College twitter:description: American college quads should be safe for free speech twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 'The Silencing' of the American College > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=eb4f0094-3be4-4e92-8126-4fe364bb4938&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches [Watch (HLS stream): Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ILvXQw25.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2015-05-21. The best words of wisdom from this year's commencement speeches_ by [Mary Eberstadt](https://time.com/author/mary-eberstadt/) ## Mary Eberstadt May 26, 2015 1:55 PM UTC by [Mary Eberstadt](https://time.com/author/mary-eberstadt/) ## Mary Eberstadt May 26, 2015 1:55 PM UTC Compared to 2014’s pugilistic commencement season, 2015’s pomp and circumstance have seemed positively decorous—at least on the surface. Unlike last year, for instance, no online mobs have materialized to make a former secretary of state [back out](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rice-backs-out-of-giving-rutgers-university-commencement-address/2014/05/03/6d87c4b4-d2d4-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c%5Fstory.html?hpid=z3) of giving a speech; no campus administrators have made embarrassingly [high-profile withdrawals](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/brandeis-cancels-plan-to-give-honorary-degree-to-ayaan-hirsi-ali-a-critic-of-islam.html?%5Fr=1) of invitations; and no uninvited speakers have subsequently had to [publish](https://www.aei.org/publication/charles-murray-an-open-letter-to-the-students-of-azusa-pacific-university/) their remarks elsewhere, like Cold War _samizdats_ of yesteryear. Instead, almost without exception, Commencement 2015 has been a positively warm and cozy affair on one campus after another—if anything, anodyne to a fault. But does this mean that academia learned a lesson from last year’s public-relations fiascos, and that American quads are now safe for free speech? A quick tour of the 2014-2015 school year suggests otherwise. Pulitzer Prize-winning author George Will was welcomed with [protests](http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/10/23/1023-George-Wills-Miami-University-lecture-draws-protest.html) at Miami University in Ohio, [uninvited](http://claremontindependent.com/george-will-uninvited-from-scripps-college/) to speak at Scripps College, and met [protests](http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/12/13/george-wills-michigan-state-commencement-speech/201873) before and during a speech at Michigan State University—all within a mere few weeks of one another. At Oberlin College in April, students [reacted](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/22/christina-hoff-sommers-speaker-oberlin-triggers-de/?page=all) to a speech by American Enterprise Institute scholar and author Christina Hoff Sommers with protests and trigger warnings. Students also protested when Sommers spoke at Georgetown University that same month. The list goes on. In her important new book, [_The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech_](http://www.amazon.com/The-Silencing-Left-Killing-Speech/dp/1621573702), author Kirsten Powers analyzes such campus malignancies with surgical coolness and precision. The subtitle of Powers’s book is apt. There is no equal-opportunity assault on free speech today at college or anywhere else: The left is leading the charge. _The Silencing_ also establishes just how far and wide the damage is done, both on college campuses and off. “The people who purport to believe in tolerance, diversity, and free speech in fact act like intolerant fundamentalists projecting their own narrow-mindedness onto Christian groups who want merely to be left alone to practice their faith and serve their campus communities,” Powers writes. What’s going on? One answer may be that an increasingly secular age finds it harder to distinguish righteousness from self-righteousness. Simply _feeling_ oneself to be in the right is not the same as _doing_ what’s right by an external or objective standard. Christianity among other religions has insisted on exactly this moral distinction—and perhaps its waning power in Western society accounts in part for the conflation of these two separate things. In one of the 2015 commencement speeches that does stand out this season—whose theme was the importance of free speech—author [Ian McEwan](http://time.com/3883212/ian-mcewan-graduation-speech-dickinson/) told graduates at Dickinson College, “Being offended is not to be confused with a state of grace; it’s the occasional price we all pay for living in an open society.” “Silencings” remain a problem no matter how unruffled most of 2015 commencement addresses appeared to be. If anything, the absence of controversy this year might be unsettling in its own right. After all, there may be something even worse than trying to scare people away from campus who think differently: making sure they aren’t invited in the first place. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] You will soon realize that graduation is one of the five great milestones of life. The others being birth, death, marriage and the day you finally pay off your student loan You are holding in your hand an idea that is so big we cannot yet see the end of it. The digital age created by people your age. Old, unconventional, useful, and just getting started. Those of you who are graduating this afternoon with high honors awards and distinctions. I say well done. And as I like to tell the C students, you too can be president. [ APPLAUSE ] You will compete in a global workplace, shop in a global marketplace, and travel further and more often than any prior generation. Just add bravery. To me, being brave means that even when you know an action can end very badly, you still forge ahead. It's a luck man or woman gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they're about to do And thinks it still matters. You should know that sometimes your passion finds you. That's exactly what happened to me. You've seen a lot of the perils of this economy first hand. How good jobs and entire industries can vanish. But instead of looking backwards you looked forward. You saw doors of opportunity waiting to be opened. Of course we mustn't forget the parents, who to get you students to this day, have sacrificed so many things, primarily money. I'm sure there are other things they sacrificed, but I'm gonna guess that money's the one they bring up most often. I want you all to say true to the most real, most sincere Most authentic parts of yourselves. I want you to ask those basic questions. Who do you wanna be? What inspires you? That your passion may be hard to spot, so keep an open mind. And then keep searching. And when you find your passion, it is yours. 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