Enforced conformity.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew

Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times who shared one of the paper's 2002 Pulitzer Prizes, was the commencement speaker at Rockford College's graduation ceremony on May 17. Hedges, the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, dispensed with the usual pap on pomp day and got right down to serious business.

"I want to talk to you today about war and empire," he began. (We reprint his speech in its entirety, along with the hostile crowd reaction, on page 24).

"Not long after I began speaking, a significant segment of the crowd began to shout me down," Hedges tells The Progressive. "They were yelling, 'God bless America,' 'Send him to France,' 'Get him out of here,' stuff like that."

Twice during Hedges's eighteen-minute speech, his microphone was unplugged.

Some people even charged the speaker's stand. "People were climbing on the platform," Hedges says. "It was threatening, and a little bit disturbing."

He had to abbreviate his remarks, and when he finished, he was lustily booed.

Rockford College in Illinois is 157 years old. "Our vision: to be Jane Addams's college in the twenty-first century," its website states, proclaiming its values of "Liberal Arts and Citizenship." (Jane Addams graduated from Rockford College in 1882.)

A few days after commencement, Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow apologized--not to Hedges, but to the students. In a May 21 letter to Rockford College graduates, Pribbenow wrote: "Unfortunately, our commencement address this past Saturday did not focus on your educational accomplishments and the challenges you will meet in the future.... Our speaker presented his ideas in a style that suggested the day was about him and not you. For this, I am very sorry."

Hedges told the Rockford Register Star, "You don't invite a speaker like this if you want 'Climb Every Mountain.'"

On Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!, Hedges reflected some more on his experience. "Crowds, especially crowds that become hunting packs, are very frightening," he said. "As I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what my book is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience, and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd--for that euphoria that comes with patriotism.... That kind of contagion leads ultimately to tyranny. It's very dangerous, and it has to be stopped. I've seen it, in effect, take over other countries. But of course, it breaks my heart when I see it in my country." Hedges told Goodman that the campus security guards were worried about his safety, so they "hustled me out" while Pribbenow was "handing out the diplomas."

Hedges's speech also has gotten him into trouble with higher-ups at the Times. They are "looking into whether I broached the protocol in terms of my very pointed statements about the Iraqi war," he told Goodman. "That's something that makes them uncomfortable."

"Chris Hedges's commencement speech at Rockford College did not adhere to the guidelines set forth in our ethics code," says Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for the New York Times Company. "Specifically, he engaged in public discourse concerning his political or personal views."

What happened to Chris Hedges is only a sample of the goon squad style that is so in vogue today. Rightwing talk radio ran an apparently successful effort to end Danny Glover's ad campaign for MCI because of his anti-war and anti-Bush views. Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo may have lost acting jobs for their outspokenness. Susan Sarandon was supposed to speak to the United Way in Tampa on the uncontroversial topic of women in volunteerism, but the United Way rescinded her invitation. She and her partner, Tim Robbins, were disinvited to Cooperstown to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Bull Durham. And everyone has heard about the Dixie Chicks.

Less well known, however, are the incidents of neo-McCarthyism that affect noncelebrities. Some of these make the national news, and some don't.

You may have heard about Stephen F. Downs, the chief lawyer for New York State's Commission on Judicial Conduct, who was arrested on March 3 for refusing to take off a peace T-shirt in a mall near Albany. The shirt said "Peace on Earth" on one side and "Give Peace a Chance" on the other...