Huh. Ed Helms gave the commencement speech at Cornell in 2014. This was presumably based on him having played a character who went to that particular Ivy League school.

I'll tell you what: No serious person gives a damn who their commencement speaker is. Sure, if Obama or Conan O'Brian shows up, that's worth a headline. But the only people who join the Commencement Planning Committee to decide between Jerry Seinfeld and Kermit the Frog, are unserious people. College kids tend to be more liberal, sure, but you can't really put that sentence together without the word "kids" in it. College "adults", if any, wouldn't pay 25 dollars to rent a mortarboard in the first place.

I believe any movement in favor of a collective attempt to cling to an anachronistic past, in the face of drastic, rapid, broad, sweeping social and economic changes facilitated by modern technology will face an inevitable implosion.

There will always be clusters and enclaves of the orthodox. Amish and Quakers, if you will.

But when we're staring down the barrel of self driving cars that map our cities for us (even the crumbling cities no one wants to live in), privatized corporate rocket ships, quad-copter delivery services, instant/constant/global all-points communication in every language simultaneously, artificially intelligent voice-activated personal helthcare devices, killer robot jet aircraft miles overhead watching us all with baited breath for an air strike, cryptocurrencies few fully understand but many will hurriedly buy drugs with, high frequency autonomous trading no one understands and everyone fears, well gee... the humdrum arguments even from last year barely seem to make sense this year.

Trying to preserve any political inclinations amidst all this, let alone those biased towards standing still or moving backward, is like trying to swim against a tidal wave.

I don't think any political label will survive this kind of tide. Only attitudes and personalities persist in this kind of turbulence.

Condoleezza Rice - Neo-con and socially liberal

Christine Lagarde - Neo-con internationalist banker

Robert Birgeneau - Lifer academic liberal

Conservative... I do not think this word means what you think this word means.

Agreed on Birgeneau, but I don't understand your comment regarding the first two. You realize "neo-con" is short for neo-conservative right?

Globalist neo-conservatives are conservative in name only: they are typically socially indifferent, contemptuous of decentralization and tradition, and radically progressivist in international relations.

Russell Kirk was a conservative. Condi Rice is not.

I'm not sure the author of the article is referring exclusively to social conservatism. There's also fiscal conservatism, which Republicans are associated with.

Yet somehow, they all end up in bed together.

Yeah, it seemed weird to me the conflation of conservative and Republican. I mean, how is Timothy Dolan not a conservative?

News flash! Generally liberal college students prefer liberal commencement speakers. Hardly a surprise, really. How many college students do you know who are looking to hear from George W. Bush or Ted Cruz?

I would have preferred George W. Bush over my commencement speaker. Hell, who'd say no to a former president?

Apparently, plenty of people.

Interesting observation, but isn't this just a reflection of the fact that the Republican party is in a deep, deep hole with the sound majority of educated Americans?

If you define "educated" as being a college graduate, more educated people voted Republican than Democrat in the last presidential election: http://www.statista.com/statistics/245886/voter-turnout-of-t...

If by "educated Americans" you mean educated americans, no, not especially. If by "educated Americans" you mean college faculty, college staff and administrators, and young people active in campus politics, yes.

Conservative doesn't necessarily equal Republican. Not all conservatives are Republicans and not all Republicans are conservative.

Certainly if taken at the true meaning of the word - value of traditions and institutions and opposed to change for changes sake - proper conservatives of different stripes can have something to offer for young graduates.

and young people

Well, at universities people are very intellectual. The right wing has had a decidedly anti-intellectual stance for quite some time now.

I would consider Milton Friedman very intellectual. I would also classify him as on the conservative side of the ledger. Some might even call him right wing. He certainly would have made a good commencement speaker.

There is a danger of groupthink that anyone who doesn't follow the du-jour trends of college life must be an anti-intellectual. Young people should be aware of this as they leave college and enter the real world. Few things are as insufferable as a young person who plasters their political views into a workplace without respect for the people they work with.

Milton Friedman would be considered a liberal by modern conservatives, really. Accepting that monetary policy can be effective is heresy to the conservatives who currently wield power.

But yes, Milton Friedman would be an excellent commencement speaker. I'm sure there are more great academic conservatives who would be equally good, but very few of them are well-known enough to be considered even if the students wanted a conservative.

He also advocated negative income tax, which is essentially communism to the right.

The veracity of each of those statements would increase substantially with a well placed "some".

They are also very self-congratulatory.