“Today I’d like to talk to you about how important it is for freedom to exist for everyone, no matter how strongly we disagree with another’s viewpoint.”
These remarks might be unusual coming from a commencement speaker, and especially a politician. After considering the circumstances under which Michael Bloomberg delivered his Harvard commencement speech Thursday afternoon, however, we might truly give pause to these words.
Bloomberg, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1966, began his duties as mayor of New York City only two months following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. On Thursday, he stood before an audience of more than 30,000 people in Cambridge, which had been home to the assailants of another deadly attack of terror on April 15th, 2013.
The commencement ceremony itself faced heightened security precautions after a man was arrested for carrying two guns into Boston University’s commencement on May 29th, just 10 days prior to the event. Security subjected parents, friends, faculty and alumni to careful bag checks and metal detectors.
Bloomberg has repeatedly been in close proximity to destruction as a result of conflicting ideologies. It would be understandable to assume someone might become jaded by years of encountering extremism. Yet, Bloomberg unexpectedly encouraged the 6,500 graduates he addressed to leave Harvard willing to practice tolerance. He encouraged his audience to protect the freedoms of everyone to worship, speak and marry as they wish.
The Medford, Mass. native continued to place blame for a large absence of tolerance in today’s society on a surprising source for a college commencement speech: universities themselves, such as Harvard, whom he described as often failing to foster tolerance in its own student body and faculty.
Bloomberg cited a number of commencement speakers that stepped aside this year after faced with student-led protests against leaders, such as Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at Rutgers University, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde at Smith College and women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University. Remarks also focused on Harvard’s own failed protest against the Graduate School of Education speaker, Colorado State Senator Michael Johnston.
Bloomberg argued that these students had demonstrated a clear lack of diverse ideological education. When faced with opposing political views, students and faculty sought to silence these speakers instead of learn from those whom with they did not agree. He continued that requiring commencement speakers “to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university … the purpose to stir discussion, not silence it.”
It was this same repression of human expression, Bloomberg claimed, that was behind a major attempt to prevent the construction of a Mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center while he was mayor; “[to] single out a particular religion … diametrically opposed the moral principles that gave rise to our great nation.” The speaker underscored that intolerances of ideas, such as these, are plainly unjust.
“I know this has not been a traditional commencement speech,” stated Bloomberg in his closing remarks, “but there is no easy time to say hard things … stand up for the rights of others.”
To hear Bloomberg’s full speech, tune into the video below.
