Commencement thoughts
Published by marco on
From Pomp and Circumstance by Corey Robin, a short article about NYU’s craven response to NYU student denounced Israel’s genocide in Gaza during his graduation speech to roaring applause. (YouTube)
“Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don’t have passports, don’t live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even once flown in a plane.”
—Susan Sontag
It also included this brilliant quote of Salman Rushdie,
“Since I have come to believe that such defiance is an inevitable and essential aspect of what we call freedom, I thought I might commend it to you. For in the years to come you will find yourselves up against gods of all sorts, big and little gods, corporate and incorporeal gods, all of them demanding to be worshipped and obeyed – the myriad deities of money and power, of convention and custom, that will seek to limit and control your thoughts and lives.
“Defy them; that’s my advice to you. Thumb your noses; cock your snooks. For, as the myths tell us, it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed their humanity.”
Logan RozosAs Robin writes, this is not how the elites act.
“what do the leaders of NYU do? Freak out about this student, their commencement speaker, who had the audacity to refer to “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine,” and, so, naturally, is having his diploma revoked.
“[…]
“What a juvenile society we live in.”