The private school's decision was to say, "No, child, you will not risk a riot at our celebration of all of our student's graduation".
The freedom of speech argument is brought up (ironically) from the group that has been shutting down free speech for the last few years.....but still, the argument must be applied equally.
Still, at the same time, it is a private, ticketed event. The choice of topics rests with them. (If ND learned that one of it's in game football honorees was going to use their microphone moment to go on an anti Israel diatribe, wouldn't you think that they have the right to simply not give the person the opportunity ahead of time?). And there are riot concerns with safety for the school's parents.
Then, there is the choice of valedictorians. many people falsely believe that the valedictorian is the smartest kid in the class with the highest grade point average. False.
There are usually multiple perfect grade point students from multiple different colleges within a university. At ND for instance, each department head chooses a valedictorian candidate from their particular school after conferring with the professors..
From there, the school chooses it's valedictorian based on this list and looking at the rest of the candidates accomplishments. It is not a fair process because a 4.0 in some departments is much more difficult than a 4.0 in some other majors, and the electives of one candidate might be far more impressive wrt grade point than another candidate...yet the other candidate could be chosen simply because of a political reason such as evening out the choices among departments over the years.
So.....wtf did they choose this candidate?!! This is where USC missed this boat imo
In general, I would lean to have the speaker speak...we cannot be afraid to hear opposing points of view speak. There is the risk to consider in this case though, and there is the very real concerns about offending other speakers, and more to the point...donors - esp at USC.
A simpler solution might have been to change the valedictorian speech to a written handout with a disclaimer at the bottom saying that any views expressed are not necessarily the schools.
What do you think?
Link: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4605360-pro-palestinian-usc-valedictorian-address-israel-gaza-hamas/