Dateline 1980: Buckley Renegs on Vassar College Commencement Address

In the Spring of 1980, Mr. Buckley had accepted an invitation to speak at the Vassar College commencement exercises in May of that year. After his acceptance the students began agitating against him, culminating in 53% of the class opposing his appearance according to the student newspaper. "Spring at Vassar is traditionally lively," the university president explained.

Here's an excerpt from Buckley's response:

I decline the invitation to participate in Vassar's Commencement exercises.

You stressed the point, in your open letter to the student body of April 21, that you had invited me pursuant to established procedures for selecting a Commencement speaker. I do not doubt that you did, but there is no gainsaying, notwithstanding that your invitation was issued in the name of the senior class, that a numerical majority of that same class have recorded their opposition to my speaking at Commencement.

Moreover, I tend to agree that Commencement speakers are an integral part of the ceremony, broadly viewed; and although Commencement speakers cannot reasonably be expected to incarnate the institution at which they speak (unless they are Douglas MacArthur, addressing West Point), their physical presence should not ordinarily be offensive to the majority of the graduating class: indeed, it is for this reason that most colleges consult the senior class on the matter of a Commencement speaker.

The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company, and I must confess, having read specimens of their thoughts and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar. Really, they appear to be a fearfully ill-instructed body, to judge from the dismayingly uninformed opinions expressed in their newspaper, which opinions reflect an academic and cultural training very nearly unique -- at least, in my experience. I have spoken, I suppose, at five hundred colleges and universities in the past thirty years, and nowhere have I encountered that blend of ferocious illiteracy achieved by the young men and women of Vassar who say they speak for the majority of the graduating class and, to some extent, say so plausibly by adducing the signatures of the majority of that class in their recall petition. One professor of English writes to the newspaper, "It was Buckley who offered pridefully in those days the caste of mind and insinuating attitudes toward academics which intellectually veneered the crudities of Joe McCarthy, and in so doing, fueled 'McCarthyism' at its most virulent pitch with respect to the academic community." That the man who composed that sentence should be teaching English at Vassar rather than studying it suggests that Vassar has much, much deeper problems than coming up with a suitable Commencement speaker.

pp. 137-38.