It's Our Party, We Can Protest If We Want To

Recently in U.S. News and World Report, Laura K. Chapin published an instruction to the class of 2014: "Grow up." She addresses students protesting their university's choice of commencement speaker or honorary doctorate recipient, arguing that based on the stature and achievement of the honoree, students ought to be respectful through engagement rather than protest. Though I suspect hers is a minority position, she provides an opportunity to explore the value of public protest in the context of Catholic higher education.

In any setting, the public honoring of a controversial figure naturally comes with a diversity of reactions. The spectrum of these reactions can be observed on most university campuses. Chapin sees student protest as a particularly immature approach. Her interest is in preserving the productive dialogue that students prepare for in higher education. She paints protest as the failure to achieve this dialogue. However, she fails to see that protest can be dialogue in its most appropriate form.