The Young America’s Foundation has once again compiled an invaluable compendium of this season’s commencement speakers and found, once again, that they overwhelmingly represent one point of view.
Moreover, in our review of 127 of the arguably representative speakers they highlight, we note that one-third—41—have discernible political views. By the most expansive definition, one-third of these—10—can be called anything from apolitical to definitively conservative:
- Philip M. Breedlove at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
- Former President George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University
- Former Secretary of labor , Elaine Chao, retired Admiral Thad Allen, at Georgetown
- Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels at Purdue
- Former S. Representative Gabby Giffords and her husband former astronaut Mark Kelly at Cornell
- Chess champion and dissident Garry Kasparov at the University of St. Louis,
- Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at William and Mary,
- Poet and dissident Salman Rushdie at Emory
The others, whom our sister organization Accuracy in Media has covered extensively, all fall on the Left of the political spectrum. For example, graduates at Georgetown got to hear from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U. S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia and Charlie Rose. Here’s the rest of the lecture circuit:
- Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke at Tufts;
- Actor Alan Alda spoke at Carnegie Mellon;
- Former Colorado Michael Bennet spoke at the University of Denver;
- Vice President Joe Biden spoke at Yale;
- Charles Bolden of NASA spoke at the University of Pittsburgh;
- New York Times columnist David Brooks spoke at Dartmouth;
- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns spoke at Washington University in St. Louis;
- Linguist and Left-wing activist Noam Chomsky spoke at Drexel;
- Self-described satirist Stephen Colbert spoke at Wake Forest;
- Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at George Washington University;
- Katie Couric spoke at the University of Wisconsin;
- S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke at the Georgia Institute of Technology;
- S. Rep. Donna Edwards spoke at UC-Santa Cruz;
- Richard Engel of NBC spoke at Stanford;
- UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres spoke at the University of California at San Diego;
- Finance executive Mellody Hobson spoke at the University of Southern California;
- Author Walter Isaacson spoke at Vanderbilt as well as at Lehigh University;
- Former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson spoke at Princeton;
- Gov. Terry McAuliffe spoke at UVA;
- Bill Nye “the science guy” spoke at Rutgers;
- Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick spoke at Harvard;
- Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering spoke at Brandeis;
- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at Rice;
- UN Ambassador Samantha Power spoke at Penn;
- Former EPA administrator William Reilly spoke at American University;
- Amy Robach of Good Morning America spoke at the University of Georgia;
- Google’s Eric Schmidt spoke at Virginia Tech;
- Megan Smith, chief technology officer of the U.S. spoke at MIT;
- NPR’s Nina Totenberg spoke at the University of Vermont; and
- Meredith Vieira spoke at Boston University;
