Mark Steyn pulls no punches in a piece, "The Wretched Jelly-Spined Nothing Eunuchs of Brandeis". An excerpt from a conversation with Jamie Weinstein:
JAMIE WEINSTEIN: And people when they get honorary degrees, it's not like they only go to non-political people. Universities have awarded them in the recent past to people that want Israel to be wiped off the map and destroyed. Is that not right?
MS: Yeah, that's true. And that was Brandeis, a guy called Tony Kushner... I stand back and occasionally roll my eyes at the dreary left-wing hacks invited to give commencement speeches, garlanded with state honors, things that if you trend to the right side of the spectrum, you know you're going to be labeled 'controversial conservative', and you'll never get anywhere near. But this woman is a black, feminist atheist from Somalia. And so what we're learning here, which is fascinating, in the hierarchy of progressive-politics identity-group victimhood, Islam trumps everything. Islam trumps gender. The fact that she's a woman doesn't matter. It trumps race. The fact that she's black doesn't matter. It trumps secularism. The fact that she's an atheist doesn't matter. They wouldn't do this if it was a Christian group complaining about her, if it was a Jewish group complaining about her. But when the Islamic lobby group says oh, no, we're not putting up with this, as I said, these jelly-spined nothings at Brandeis just roll over for them.
I have sat through many, many convocation/graduation ceremonies. Steyn is right. Pronouncements from left wing, caring, elitist interventionists proclaiming moral superiority are common; among the most egregious at UWO was Maude Barlow. Only rarely are outspoken pundits from the right (e.g. Mark Steyn? or EclectEcon?) invited to such events.