Reap what you sow…

You’ve probably seen some news articles by now about BU’s 2023 Commencement speech by David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Brothers, and the resulting protests by students due to the ongoing writers’ strike. BU’s outgoing president, Robert Brown, released a letter at the end of the month apologizing to Zaslav and criticizing the students for trying to implement “cancel culture” or, as I like to think of it, consequences. In this case, consequences for being on the side of a very public and wide reaching labor dispute that would likely have few if any sympathizers among the graduates.

For the record, I was at the commencement with my family, celebrating the graduation of my younger daughter. It was a lovely day, and the picketing strikers and student protesters did little to mar the day and the festivities. If anything was disrespectful, it was the selection of a speaker who at any other time would have been at best a fairly uninspiring speaker. A commencement and it’s partipants should be a time for celkebration and inspiration, not for listening to a rather tone deaf speech from a media conglomerate CEO reminencing about sneaking into Fenway Park for the end of Red Sox games and how unsatisifying it was making good money at his first job (to be honest, I expect he couldn’t easily find a speachwriter currently). To add insult to injury, one of his fellow honorary degree recipients sharing the stage was Surpreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Now there would have been a good speaker.