About five months ago, Dickinson College was party to one of the most shameful acts of cancel culture I have ever seen: the cancellation of Michael Smerconish’s commencement address.
For those returning students among you who somehow were unaware of last semester’s events or – more likely – current first year students reading this now, I offer the following brief explanation of events. Around the middle of the spring 2024 semester, President Jones announced that the 2024 commencement speaker would be Michael Smerconish, a political commentator and writer who works for CNN and hosts his own independent news podcast on YouTube.
Shortly after this announcement, a Dickinson student published an Opinion article in The Dickinsonian titled “The Class of 2024 Deserves Better than Michael Smerconish.” In this article, the author accuses Smerconish of advocating for racial profiling in airport security and urges for his invitation to Dickinson’s commencement be rescinded and his honorary degree canceled. These accusations and conclusions were based on select quotations from Mr. Smerconish’s 2004 book “Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11.”
Having read the book for myself in the months since these events unfolded, I can now confidently say that this article and the Dickinson student body’s response to it does a tremendous disservice both to Smerconish’s journalistic work and to Smerconish himself. Both the inciting Dickinsonian article and the subsequent campus protests dismiss the merits of Smerconish’s argument while selectively choosing quotes from “Flying Blind” that fit theirintended narrative. By taking them out of both their literary and temporal context, both of which are vital for a complete understanding of the quotes in question, the students do Mr. Smerconish a diservice.
The thesis of “Flying Blind” was that the government should not restrict airport security from considering race or ethnicity in their day-to-day operations. The impetus for the book was a Department of Transportation policy that banned airport security from having more than two people of any given race or ethnicity in secondary screening at any given time.
Based on extensive research and investigation, Smerconish finds that even if airport security had been suspicious of all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, then-existing DOT policy would have precluded security personal from subjecting all 19 of them to further screening at the same time. Essentially, the majority of them would have been allowed to move through security without additional screening. Smerconish does not advocate for – and in fact, at several points in his book, strongly advocates against – the mistreatment of any group of people based on race or ethnicity.
On page 112, Smerconish says “No one is advocating [for] the rounding up of those who resemble the 9/11 hijackers, least of all me.” On page 116 he says “Do young Arab males have a tendency to commit terrorist acts? No.” Continuing on page 188, Smerconish says“…Does that mean that every [person named] Mohammed is pulled aside? Heck no.”
Despite this clear evidence to the contrary, some members of the Dickinson student body – especially the author of the initial Dickinsonian article – insisted on portraying Smerconish as a bigoted Islamophobe who the Class of 2024 “deserves better than.”
This is not to say that I necessarily agree with all of Smerconish’s arguments throughout “Flying Blind.” I will offer neither a full endorsement nor a rebuttal of his work here as it will simply distract from my more important goal: to advocate that the student body endeavor to be more open-minded when engaging diverse viewpoints.
The core issue is that Mr. Smerconish’s work is not anywhere near as hateful, bigoted or evil as certain members of the Dickinson community made it out to be. Even if you disagree with his conclusions, Smerconish’s work is still undeniably worthy of both good-faith, consideration and respectful engagement. And, furthermore, Smerconish’s work was certainly not a valid justification for rescinding his invitation to Dickinson’s 2024 Commencement Ceremony.
To be clear, I believe that President Jones and the rest of the faculty handled this situation as well as they could have been expected to, given the circumstances. Smerconish put it best in his video responding to the cancellation of his address: “I would never want to be anything that takes attention away from the Class of 2024. Especially recognizing that COVID robbed its members of recognition when they graduated from high school in the year 20[20].”
Based on the level of determination I witnessed among student protesters over the course of the weeks preceding this announcement, it appeared to me that if the College had moved forward with Smerconish as commencement speaker, there would have been student led protests and/or heckling of Smerconish’s address that would have disrupted the commencement ceremonies.
Protests are an important form of free speech when applied to just causes. I do not believe that this was a cause worthy of protest, but I believe President Jones’ decision to prioritize giving the Class of 2024 a normal commencement ceremony was the right one.
However, I believe the fact that President Jones was driven to this measure by the student body, is still a negative outcome that runs inherently counter to Dickinson’s values of reasoned and thoughtful dialogues across differing backgrounds. The cancellation of Mr. Smerconish’s commencement address represented a refusal by our campus to engage respectfully – or even give a good faith effort to understand – a viewpoint with which many of us disagreed with.
Michael Smerconish is not a Tucker Carlson-esque far-right commentator. He is a self-proclaimed moderate independent who works for CNN. His most well-known book is titled “Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: American Life in Columns.” I think this title speaks for itself as to the type of political viewpoints Smerconish holds. In his video responding to his cancellation, Smerconish explained some of what he would have said if his commencement address had gone forward. In his own words, he would have encouraged the Class of 2024 to resist the temptation to engage with the “bombast and discontent” and try to “restore civility and compromise to our public discourse.” Undoubtedly, this would have been an invaluable and unambiguously positive message for the graduating class to hear before they went out into the world and into their careers. However, to the detriment of all those who attended commencement – myself included – Smerconish was never able to give this address.
I have purposefully elected to attach my name to this op ed; I do not want to hide behind a veil of anonymity. I do not believe that most of the students participating in the campus protest last year acted in bad faith. My guess would be that when they saw the then-existing trend of campus protests relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict, they wanted to take part. But, being unable to find anything else Dickinson had done that was worth protesting about, the student body settled on cancelling someone who they were told might have some anti-Arab views. The problem being the fact that they neglected to actually check if those allegations were true before acting on them. In essence, I believe that a combination of hearsay, mob mentality and the bandwagon effect led the student body to make a shameful mistake. As such, I remain confident that the vast majority of Dickinsonians are fully capable of engaging respectfully with diverging viewpoints. If this describes you, I encourage you to come find me. I would be more than willing to engage in a thoughtful and informed discussion on this matter with any other students on campus who would like to do so.
Neverthless, I believe last spring Dickinson College embarrassed itself. In an age of polarization, our campus fell victim to some of its worst aspects. However, I firmly believe that the majority of the student body does not truly believe that the events of last spring were a good thing. In his response to his commencement speech being canceled, Michael Smerconish described the situation as “when volume eclipses reason.” I believe that this is an appropriate summary of events. The manner in which a select few students on campus conducted themselves should not be reflective of the entire student body.
Ultimately, I recognize that there is nothing that can be done to rectify last semester’s events at this point. I can only hope that the Dickinson community can take to heart some of the lessons that. Smerconish would have imparted on the Class of 2024 if he had been given the chance. Hopefully, the next time a situation like this rolls around, we can all take a little more time to find the context around an argument and engage respectfully with its author rather than engaging in cancel culture to silence a differing viewpoint.
