Man. You leave the country for a couple of weeks in India (BTW, a nation that happens to be the world’s largest democracy) and suddenly the center no longer holds!

I’m referring to the whole dust-up at Brigham Young University and beyond over the school’s invitation to Vice Prez Dick Cheney to keynote spring commencement. While it took a few days to track back the genesis of the invitation, it finally turns out that the White House started the ball rolling by offering Cheney’s services to BYU. The school, via the LDS Church First Presidency, then issued a formal invitation.

First observation: Things are either alarmingly slow at the veep’s D.C. communications office (What? Harvard and Stanford were already booked?), or Cheney is showing the Bush Administration’s growing desperation with its plummeting popularity and needs the biggest fawning audience available to shore him up.

Uh, I think it’s more likely the latter, don’t you?

Main observation: It appears the march-in-lockstep image of BYU is crumbling just the tiniest bit. The College Democrats chapter is planning at least one protest of Cheney’s appearance. A handful of progressive faculty members has stepped up to publicly challenge the invitation. One professor pointed out the Y’s longstanding history of inviting conservative speakers to the exclusion of liberals — an obvious effort to prevent the clashing of ideas and free speech that most universities welcome and nurture.

Some students and profs are even trying for petition drives on campus (which requires official permission) to block Cheney’s visit.

Wow. It feels something like a pro wrestling match breaking out in heaven.

Now I certainly know a few truths. BYU is a private, religious institution. It accepts no taxpayers’ money and thus can do anything it likes. And as history shows — think periodic purges of free-thinking faculty members — it generally does exactly as it wants. Also, it’s absurd to think that the students, faculty, alumni and community members who oppose Cheney’s speech are even close to critical mass. (Interviews with students on the issue revealed the response typical of BYU’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers world: “We should welcome him,” said one male student. “He’s a great leader.”)

And yet, you’ve gotta admire Diane Bailey, president of the College Demos. She’s smart, articulate, and on point. Cheney, she has explained, with his war-mongering ways and endorsement of torture, is no role model for thousands of young graduates about to make their mark on the world.

One last thought: I’ve spent some time in Utah County in the past few years, and it’s a mistake to paint the place as completely right-wing. In fact, the political spirit of the minority party is loud and lively. The Democrats there work like honeybees to stay involved in the process. They have to yell like hell to be heard. This is just the latest example of their activism.

And ain’t the First Amendment grand?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 8:28 am and is filed under All, Politics, Community, Media, Culture, Big Utah, Crazy Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.