I could have sworn Bill Clinton spoke at our commencement but I have no memory of it.
My husband says, “No, it was the Xerox guy,” and I said, “But I graduated a different year than you did.”
I know that Bill Clinton spoke at someone’s commencement, but I can’t remember if it was mine. I would remember that, wouldn’t I?
ETA: I just looked it up. He absolutely did speak at my commencement.
My college chose its speakers from interesting and distinguished alumni/ae, and the senior class speaker was someone voted on by the class, not a valedictorian.
Mid 1970’s, large state university: Every couple weeks there was a “typical”, traditional, speaker. Such as a known authority on a subject, or an artsy person or a public personality or a politician. They would discuss their life’s work.
I can remember:
anthropologist Margaret Mead,
radical lawyer William Kunstler ,
actor William Windom,
TV interviewer David Frost,
The head of NORML (nat’l assoc for reform of marijuana laws)
And several politicians…both of the senators and one or two congressmen from the state.
But the format then was different than today’s Charlie Kirk-style speeches–The atmosphere was not confrontational.
The speaker was rarely outdoors, usually on stage in an auditorium. There was a physical distance between the audience and the podium. People listened respectfully to a 30 or 45 minute speech, just like they listened to professors in the classroom. Then the speaker took questions from the audience, and the discussion was always respectful.
Also, the pace of life was slower, and technology was less “in-your-face”-- and that affected emotions.
For example, there were, of course, no selfies, or any close-up photography of faces which could identify the audience members, because the only camera in the vicinity was in the hands of a student reporter for the campus newspaper, who wrote one article (illustrated by one picture) about the lecture, which might appear in the paper at the end of the week.. and of course, with no “comments section” . Then maybe somebody would respond to the article with one or two letters to the editor, which would be published a day or two after that.
The goal back in those good ol’ days was not to provoke and incite…it was to present issues in a thoughtful and educational way, to intelligent people who attended because they wanted to think and get educated.
(also, remember that I am talking about the mid 1970’s .People were still reeling from the recent violence of the 60’s, and were proud and determined to hold calm discussions, without burning down the campus.)
This is the format used today for almost all speakers invited by an academic entity, and the speakers (if the university can afford it) are generally the type of experts and public figures that you’ve just described. I don’t think it’s that the times were different, it’s that the events where Kirk typically spoke were a completely different type of event, sponsored by student groups with a specific political agenda rather than by the institution. (And there were definitely student-organized events in the 1970s whose goal was to provoke and incite; my parents still tell the story of being almost the only white people in the audience at the Black Panthers Variety Show. Whether such events are more common now than they are then, I couldn’t say, but they almost certainly did exist on your campus back in the day even if you weren’t aware of them.)
Ross Perot (presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996) came to speak in late 1995 or early 1996. It was more a talk than a political rally, and I don’t recall him saying anything particularly controversial. I don’t recall anybody from either of the far extremes coming to speak during my time in college.
I heard legendary voice artist Mel Blanc speak at WVU in 1980. Got his autograph.
I checked my college yearbooks, a minor member of the UW system. I didn’t go to any.
1981: Carl Bernstein. He did look a little like Dustin Hoffman!
1982: G Gordon Liddy provided “controversial opinions” according to my yearbook.
1983: Bruce Feirstein (author of Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche). That was probably controversial. Maybe mini quiches were thrown, I don’t know.
The year before I started at UChicago (1978), Robert McNamara was invited to speak on campus. Huge protests ensued and made newspapers well outside of the Chicago area. McNamara is the subject of Errol Morris’s excellent “The Fog of War.”
Geraldine Ferraro spoke at our school in the 80s. She didn’t say anything particularly controversial, if you don’t consider supporting the Equal Rights Amendment controversial.
Despite the University of Utah being a “hot bed of liberals “ only about half of the audience applauded. My girlfriend at the time was Mormon and she did not.