Rutgers Faculty Upset at Condoleezza Rice Invitation to Graduation —Will They Oppose Barack Obama’s Too?

The faculty council at Rutgers University in New
Jersey is upset the school invited former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice to deliver the commencement address in May, and to
receive an honorary doctorate, passing a resolution calling on the
university administration to rescind it.
The Star-Ledger reports:

[T]he faculty council cited her war record and her
misleading of the public about the Iraq war as reasons for their
opposition.

“Condoleezza Rice … played a prominent role in (the Bush)
administration’s effort to mislead the American people about the
presence of weapons of mass destruction,” according to the
resolution. And she “at the very least condoned the Bush
administration’s policy of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ such
as waterboarding,” it said.

“A Commencement speaker… should embody moral authority and
exemplary citizenship,” it continued, and “an honorary Doctor of
Laws degree should not honor someone who participated in a
political effort to circumvent the law.”

The measure was introduced by a chemistry professor who said
students were also concerned.

Misleading the American people? Participating in a political
effort to circumvent the law? Condoleezza Rice has a long career in
academia and policy making, and her life stories can certainly
provide some kind of inspiration and even direction for graduating
seniors, the role of a commencement speaker. Iraq was a major
policy blunder, one that cost the U.S., and Iraq, too much blood
and treasure. And the Bush White House, for whom Rice served, is
certainly guilty of a gross expansion of the powers of the
executive branch, including waterboarding and other potential war
crimes. Whether that precludes Rice from speaking to twenty-one
year olds being sent out to the real world after spending four to
six on a piece of paper isn’t necessarily obvious.

Being a hopeless pessimist, what does seem obvious to me is that
the faculty council is being driven not by any moral compass but by
partisan concerns. They can prove me wrong. New Jersey’s
congressional delegation
is lobbying for Barack Obama to accept Rutgers’
 invitation to speak at the 2016 commencement. Will the
faculty condemn this invitation too? Obama, like Rice, and more so
as the head of the executive branch, is also responsible for Bush
school
war and terror
policies,
misleading the American people, and
attempting to circumvent the law. Arguments that would support
Obama speaking to graduating seniors but not Rice are highly
unlikely to be intellectually rigorous or anything more than
partisan apologetics.