It’s college graduation season, when high-profile commencement speakers are scrutinized as barometers of academia’s ideological leanings. A speech by Harvard College’s dean this year suggests you learn more when a school bureaucrat articulates the worldview that shapes campus culture than when a celebrity jets in, collects an honorarium and leaves.
Rakesh Khurana opened his Class Day speech to graduating seniors with a summary of the changes at Harvard over the previous four years. He omitted two in which he played a central role: the removal of law professor Ronald Sullivan from oversight of an undergraduate dorm and the effort to banish single-sex social clubs. Mr. Sullivan’s legal representation of rape defendant Harvey Weinstein had put the “well-being” of Harvard’s students at risk, Mr. Khurana announced earlier this year, and the single-sex clubs perpetuated “spaces that are rife with power imbalances.”