Young America's Foundation just released its annual survey of commencement speakers at top schools. Once again, the study found a liberal dominance among invited commencement speakers. "For twelve years, we’ve shown that college administrators are using commencement ceremonies to send their students off with one more predictable leftist lecture," Ron Robinson, the group's president, explained. "This year, the most prestigious schools exclude scholars like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas for the likes of Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Hillary Clinton, and Howard Zinn. But some positive changes are being made." Glad to hear about the "positive changes," but the campuses have a long way to go before they begin to approach something resembling fairness.

While the mainstream Arnold Schwarzenneger gets heckled as he delivers a commencement address at a school he attended in the '70s, top colleges and universities roll out the red carpet for such fringe cases as former Congressman Ron Dellums (Mills), San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome (Berkeley), Eric Schlosser (DePauw), Howard Zinn (Spelman), and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Margaret Marshall (Brandeis). With left-wing screeds frequently appearing on assigned reading lists, campus activists attacking conservative speakers, and liberal professors outnumbering conservatives by greater than 25-1 at some campuses, should we be surprised that administrators push their ideology on the captive audience they have on graduation day?

One last shot in arm before they hit the real world, eh?

I'm not surprised by this, but I highly doubt the graduates even notice and/or care. I graduated from Kansas State University in 2002, and I don't remember who was the commencement speaker. It was some person that seemed to ramble on for an eternity about who knows what. There were more important things on my mind like how much longer I had to wear that scratchy gown and what kind of beer I wanted to drink way too much of as soon as the ceremony ended.

A recent commencement speaker at Berkeley was some Harvard bigwig who attempted to flatter the Cal crowd by calling Harvard "the Berkeley of the East". Oakland's leading newspaper gave it front-page, above-the-fold coverage(!).

Jerrold Nadler, liberal Manhattan Congressman (recently singled out for criticism on www.frontpagemag.com), spoke at my elementary school graduation when he was still a NY City Coucilman. I only remember platitudes.