This Year, Anger At Speaker Is From the Right

While this year's main Commencement speaker, Vice President Al Gore '69, seems unlikely to spark any real controversy, Class Day speaker Lani C. Guinier '71 is quite another matter.

After last year's barrage of pink balloons and publicity for main Commencement speaker Gen. Colin L. Powell, the University this year picked someone who seems to have offended no one but a few allegedly superfluous government officials.

But the senior class, which last year went for the apple-pie-and parenthood choice of Children Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, this year picked a woman who has lately rarely escaped the spotlight of controversy.

Did the University deliberately go for the inoffensive Gore after last year's choice of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chief Powell offended many gay faculty and student groups?

No, says one member of the Board of Overseers, which must okay all Commencement speaker choices. Gore himself is a former Overseer.

"I don't think that was the rationale for choosing, but I can't say much more than that," said Alma H. Young.

The Powell speech sparked a symbolic Faculty vote on Harvard's ROTC policy, as well as the balloons and some prominently placed pink triangles on Commencement day.

The choice of Guinier, however, has raised the ire of quite a different constituency: campus conservatives.

While conservative students aren't over-joyed with Gore, either, Guinier is offensive to many.

Derided by conservatives as a "quota queen" who wished to create a prejudicial race-linked voting system, Guinier was President Clinton's first nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Clinton withdrew the nomination after Guinier's views on the legal rights of minorities generated controversy.

"With Al Gore and Guinier, I'm worried that the rest of the world will think that Harvard has too many morons," says G. Brent McGuire '95, a council member and spokesperson for the conservative campus magazine Peninsula.

"It is hard to believe that Guinier is being allowed to use the credibility of the Harvard name as a forum for her extreme judicial views," Republican Club President Bradford P. Campbell '95 says.

Guinier is not distinguished, just notorious, conservative students say.

"I don't see why they should have chosen a person who is a law professor at [the University of Pennsylvania], otherwise relatively undistinguished, who was not even allowed a place by Clinton, and is only known for her radical views," says Michael P. Cole '94, a staff member at the moderate conservative publication The Salient.

McGuire said that many conservatives were upset at the lack of political balance between Guinier and Gore. The two are too close on the political spectrum, while Edelman and Powell embodied more of a liberal-conservative balance, students say.

"At least last year [the liberal leaning] was offset by Colin Powell," Campbell says.

But the conservatives seem to contradict each other on how well Guinier represents the political leanings of the College.

The speaker was chosen by a 25-member Senior Class Committee after considering responses from suggestion sheets distributed to members of the senior class.

Gannon says he isn't sure where the committee came up with the choice of Guinier.

"I am not happy, and I wonder who the people are on the panel that chose her," Campbell says. "I can't even conceive of the discussions of the committee that chose her and I am going to try and prevent such foolishness for my own graduation."

But others concede that Guinier's liberalism may represent the consensus of the College better than their own.

"It is not a liberal shift, it is the status quo," McGuire says.

Salient staff member Torben H. Botts '94 says the choice of Guinier's marks no move to the left in a campus already as liberal as possible.

"I am not sure how much this school can do to shift to the left," he says.

But despite their outrage, the conservatives seem unlikely to take to the streets with placards and bullhorns.

"I'm naturally averse to protest, and anyway, the choice itself is its own testimony to stupidity," Campbell says.

If right-leaning students do protest, they say, it will likely be more restrained than most.

"I am planning to have a group of people express their dissatisfation stridently but quietly," Cole says.

If conservatives do demonstrate at Guinier's speech, Gannon says, it will partially be a reaction to last year's Powell protest.

"I don't think conservatives will protest Lani Guinier, but if we do it would simply be to point out how silly the protests were last year," Gannon said.