Boston University’s retiring president has despatched a parting shot at his last class of graduating college students, calling out the alums for “cancel culture” after probably the most awkward commencements of all time once they booed and shouted obscenities on the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO amid the writers’ strike.
BU President Robert Brown on Wednesday gave his perspective in regards to the heated graduation ceremony from May 21, when Writers Guild of America placing union members picketed exterior Nickerson Field and grads on the ceremony booed CEO David Zaslav.
The graduating college students chanted “Pay your writers!” at Zaslav all through his graduation speech.
Brown is now slamming the scholars “who were appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive to Mr. Zaslav.”
“Our students were not picking a fight,” Brown wrote in a publish on BU’s web site on Wednesday. “They have been making an attempt to implement the cancel tradition that has develop into all too prevalent on college campuses.
“The hundreds of virtually identical protest emails we received in my office in advance of Commencement came with an explicit ‘cancel’ hashtag, indicating an aim to prevent Mr. Zaslav from speaking,” Brown added. “The attempt to silence a speaker with obscene shouts is a resort to gain power, not reason, and antithetical to the mission and purposes of a university.”
BU has been in scorching water because the announcement of Zaslav as graduation speaker amid the Hollywood writers’ strike.
Zaslav, a BU Law alum from 1985, was invited lengthy earlier than the strike began on May 2, based on Brown.
“For a university committed to free speech, protests are appropriate and common,” the president wrote. “The right to protest and freely express strongly held convictions is essential to sustaining the liberal democracy that we enjoy.”
“But what we witnessed on Nickerson Field during Commencement veered, regrettably, in a different direction,” Brown later added. “A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav… I can’t imagine how Mr. Zaslav felt hearing these obscenities directed at him. I have apologized to Mr. Zaslav for the behavior of these students.”
Zaslav is amongst eight Hollywood CEOs pictured on a viral listing who collectively made greater than $773 million in 2021, based on the writers’ guild. Zaslav took house $246 million that yr, the guild posted on-line.
Brown, who was officiating his 18th and last graduation ceremony, has reportedly earned greater than $2 million yearly lately.
“On reflection, it seems to me that the incivility on Nickerson Field is indicative of the divisions in our country,” Brown wrote. “People shouting anonymously at one another, carrying out nothing however feeling gratified for doing so, whereas producing materials to publish on social media.
“In our specific case the shouters infringed on the rights of others—to be heard or, more simply, to celebrate a milestone for a new graduate in a ceremony not disfigured with obscenities,” he added. “We must do better and be a place where freedom of speech and the vital instrument of lawful protest can coexist and foster every individual’s sense of belonging.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”