Rutgers gives Judson University a civics lesson

Former Secretary of State and presidential national security advisor Condoleezza Rice cancelled her May 18th commencement address at Rutgers University due to protests by students and faculty. Their beef with Rice as commencement speaker stems from her involvement as spokesperson and cheerleader for the George W. Bush administration's 2003 illegal, immoral and criminal war in Iraq that has left Iraq in ruins with daily bombings killings hundreds monthly over eleven years later. Rice has never been investigated, much less indicted or convicted of war crimes for her involvement which included her public call for war so the "smoking gun of Iraq WMD wasn't a mushroom cloud" over the US. But the court of public opinion convicted her long ago and she must be careful not to travel to countries, unlike the US, who take Geneva Convention admonitions against war crimes seriously.

The students and faculty of Rutgers gave their counterparts at Elgin's Judson University, an Evangelical institution which has garnered the title for inviting Bush era war criminals to speak at their annual March World Leadership Conferences, a good civics lesson. Judson has invited three of them in the last four years: George W. Bush in 2011, British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2013 and Ms. Rice just two months ago. Not only didn't the students and faculty at Judson protest or work to cancel her speech or discourage her from speaking, they filled the hall, gave her rousing ovations, and gushed about her leadership charisma to the press afterword.

Rice has the freedom to spew her nonsense about political leadership and public service to any forum willing to give her a venue. But an educational institution which purports to promote education and moral leadership has no more sense inviting Rice to speak about that subject than the NAACP would have inviting Nevada rancher and grazing thief Cliven Bundy to speak about how blacks were better off under slavery than freedom.