Dickinson College canceled a centrist commencement speaker over a book he wrote after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks about how political correctness undermines airline safety
The College rescinded the speaking invitation to CNN host Michael Smerconish, and withdrew the honorary degree it planned to bestow upon him, after complaints from left-wing students, according to local news reports.
The college president cited what he claimed was “overwhelming opposition” to Smerconish from faculty and students in a recent statement. “As a result, with the support of our Board of Trustees, I have decided to rescind the honorary degree and invitation to speak at Commencement,” President John Jones said.
Smerconish’s detractors cited excerpts from his 2004 book “Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11.”
Students claimed the book advocates “racial profiling” and “that anyone who is Arab American or Muslim should be racially profiled,” according to CBS channel 21.
Canceling Smerconish’s speech was one of the many demands anti-Israel students made when they set up a protest camp at Dickinson in early May.
In a response posted on his website, Smerconish said his writings have been “grossly distorted…The twisting of an uncontroversial book when I wrote it twenty years ago without acknowledgment of the context in which it was written — and the resultant cancellation of constructive graduation remarks — is regrettably a reflection of our times.”
Smerconish claims many alumni have contacted him to convey their dismay with Dickinson’s last-minute decision, which besmirched Smerconish’s reputation: “This should be a cautionary tale for anyone in America who believes in fairness, common sense, the free exchange of ideas, rational decision-making, and the importance of leadership in the face of hysteria,” he says. Smerconish said Dickinson’s president should have done “the honorable thing” and called to “explain his inability to control the unjustified campus sentiment.” Smerconish says it would have been better for the college president to ask him to withdraw from the event “in return for a public statement saying that this should in no way be viewed as a negative reflection of my scholarship or work as a journalist.”
