I want to thank Wheaton College, out here in Illinois, for inviting me to give this year’s commencement address.
I recognize that, as a practicing Catholic, I was a difficult choice for the school to make—since Wheaton College is, after all, the school so well featured in the movie Prozac Nation. A school with such a strong tradition of openness to atheism, polymorphous sexuality, and the rejection of religious affiliation.
It is fitting that your school should boast such famous alumni as, um, let’s see now. The list says Ken Babby, whom I don’t actually know, but he’s listed as the youngest senior officer in the history of the Washington Post, which is sure something.
And Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, and former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, and literary agent Esther Newberg, again whom I don’t know but I’m sure she’s famous. Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener, too.
All of you should be enormously proud that you are graduating from school, as many famous people did, most of them anyway, and I’m grateful that you would have a Catholic like me in to speak about the challenges facing America’s new graduates as they enter the world after being trained in Feminist Criticism and Introduction to Film Studies.
I . . . um, I’m sorry, what? You mean that there is more than one Wheaton College? That the Evangelical one in Illinois isn’t the former women’s college in Massachusetts?
That can’t be right, Ann Curry herself told me they were the same.
If she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, then who does? I mean, come on, she’s the news anchor of The Today Show.
May 25th, 2010 | 12:16 pm
The snarky points about Ann Curry and fluffy, content free college classes are spot on, but Joe…I want to hear the rest of your speech!
May 25th, 2010 | 12:57 pm
As a Wheaton (IL) alum, I for one am willing to trade Wes Craven for either Christie Todd Whitman or Catherine Keener and a graduate to be named later.
May 25th, 2010 | 12:58 pm
At least she was mortified. I wonder how she got the invite in the first place.
May 25th, 2010 | 1:21 pm
The bigger scandal, unfortunately, would be if Joseph Bottom really were allowed to give the commencement address at Wheaton College… the Illinois one.
May 25th, 2010 | 4:05 pm
Eric, I must disagree with with you. Wheaton, the Illinois one, would be a great place for Joseph Bottom to give the commencement address. Wheaton does have Roman Catholics in its student body and my son will enter his freshman year there this fall with his own subscription to First Things!
May 25th, 2010 | 5:50 pm
Wheaton got what they deserved. A talking head.
May 25th, 2010 | 9:04 pm
Dale, TWils: Will it really be that hard for Dale’s son to read FT in the Wheaton library? I didn’t need a FT subscription at TAC, which was a small, residential campus; but I got one for law school, as the law library didn’t subscribe, and the main library was 2 miles from the law school and my apartment. There’s something to be said for other students, faculty, and librarians seeing undergrads reading FT in the library.
Not that I’m arguing against an additional FT subscriber.
May 25th, 2010 | 11:43 pm
RS–No! No! First Things is in no libraries. You can’t find it there. You must subscribe. Individually. At Full Price. Now.
Jody
May 25th, 2010 | 11:54 pm
Joseph Bottum First Things is in no libraries.
Actually, that is all too true. It’s nearly impossible to find a library that carries FT. The last one that I found was on the Marine base in Iwakuni, Japan—and that was in 2001.
Why don’t more libraries carry FT? Every library in my area subscribes to The Christian Century and no one has read that since 1938.
We need people—those who have already subscribed—to help spread the word by encouraging their librarians to get a subscription to FT.
A related rant is, “Why does Borders and Barnes and Noble only get one copy of FT a month?” I’ve checked a number of them in various parts of the country and its always the same thing. They have seven copies of Shambhala Sun and Utne Reader but only one copy of FT—and you only find that one if you beat the other guy in town who is waiting for it to hit the newstands.
May 26th, 2010 | 8:04 am
Wheaton makes sure its students are protected from Catholic professors and from Catholic chapel speakers. There is no way it would tolerate a Catholic commencement speaker.
May 26th, 2010 | 9:33 am
RS: Believe it or not, my son raids the issue before I do. Yes, his own subscription will be delivered to Wheaton…in Illinios!
May 26th, 2010 | 11:49 am
Eric: As far as a Catholic professor or Commencement speaker, you are no doubt correct. But, FT’s own Fr. Neuhaus lectured at Wheaton shortly before he died (in the Billy Graham center no less!) and Wheaton prof. Alan Jacobs is a contributor to FT. Also, see the exchanges between the Ut Unum Sint Society at Franciscan Univ. (OH) and Wheaton students. So ‘official policy’ does not imply outright hostility.
May 26th, 2010 | 12:04 pm
The people at Wheaton are our friends and colleagues. I’ve lectured there, in fact, and many of their faculty have written for FT.
May 26th, 2010 | 2:09 pm
Also might point out that, last fall, Wheaton opened its Center for Early Christian Studies (Patristics, probably a 1st for an ‘evangelical’ school) with the inaugural lecture by FT-friend Robert Louis Wilken.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:43 pm
Jody, I do subscribe, individually, though maybe not at full price. There was even a short time when two copies, one with Dad’s name, one with mine, came to our house, eliminating the possibility for enmity [jesting] such as that between Dale and his son.
Even those with library access to FT should, of course, consider subscribing. At both TAC and my graduate university, new issues didn’t reach the libraries’ shelves until six weeks after they reached private mailboxes. (Incidentally, my issues reached my private mailbox in law school weeks before they reached Dad’s private mailbox across the country.)
This weekend I brought Dad my copy of the May issue, which he missed, having let his subscription lapse (My filial piety did not extend to preventing me from chiding him for this neglect.). He left it downstairs, and I caught him reading the fashion magazine I had brought my sisters upstairs, so I guess some households need upstairs and downstairs subscriptions.
Still, there were multiple times in law school when I wished I could tell multiple friends to check out an article in the latest issue in the law library, and FT would have been a much-needed counterpoint there to Ms. and Advocate. Of course, I always wrote you and asked you to send a sample issue to those friends I thought were interested in subscribing.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:46 pm
“Why don’t more libraries carry FT? Every library in my area subscribes to The Christian Century and no one has read that since 1938.”
I’m being lazy and not checking, but if I were to guess, I would say that probably The Christian Century lists its articles on EBSCO and other databases, and FT maybe doesn’t?
If this is the case, FT might try to change that. This would mean that any student in virtually any school in America with databases such as EBSCO could type in–let us say–”assisted suicide,” and get directed to FT articles, instead of merely being directed to the latest silliness from Newsweek.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:49 pm
One more comment: Our library carries FT because I asked it to. Many college libraries rely on their faculty for purchasing recommendations; give them lists of magazines such as FT, or books such as “Natural Law and the Human Person” (coming out later this year). Other books and magazines, too, of course.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:51 pm
Finally (though first in time), I refused to consider attending any college whose library did not subscribe to FT.
I did, however, draft the letter regarding my free first post-college year subscription myself, for my thesis advisor’s signature, and if you don’t want that service mentioned here, feel free to just not approve this comment.
May 26th, 2010 | 5:11 pm
Dear RS: If they let MY free advertisement get through, what you said shouldn’t be a problem!
May 26th, 2010 | 5:49 pm
Particularly now that FT has a crossword puzzle, a personal subscription is more important than ever. Librarians such as me tend to look askance at anyone taking a pencil to our precious items. Though I suppose the terribly impoverished could just photocopy that page.
May 26th, 2010 | 5:54 pm
Also, I have no recollection of who my commencement speaker was at my graduation from Wheaton, but from what I’ve seen online of Jody’s capabilities, I’m sure he’d give a much more useful and memorable performance. Particularly if he was to use an introduction like this one!
May 26th, 2010 | 6:28 pm
In law school, we tossed around the idea among the St. Thomas More Society, Law Christian Fellowship, Chabad Club, etc., of each student organization requesting or sponsoring one popular periodical (as opposed to the law journals, which were on a different floor from Ms., Advocate, the WSJ, People, the Weekly Standard, etc.). If you’re a faculty member, by all means, ask your librarians to subscribe to FT (and then don’t steal it from the reading room, a problem at TAC). Students, however, must use less direct means.
My university’s online journal service had FT. I don’t remember what it was called, though. I don’t think it was EBSCO. A print subscription is still important, however, especially with the new format. There are still university students who like to spend Saturday evenings wandering the periodical stacks.
May 26th, 2010 | 7:12 pm
Another website had an interesting headline for this story: “Imagine if Sarah Palin made this mistake.”
May 26th, 2010 | 7:15 pm
One more comment, regarding Catholics at Wheaton: I love Wheaton and have visited many times, but does anyone remember Joshua Hochschild, who used to teach there?
May 27th, 2010 | 9:20 pm
Craig–Yeah, but I defended Wheaton’s position at the time of the Hochschild situtation, arguing that it should mean something that the school is Protestant. Jody
May 29th, 2010 | 9:44 pm
I was a student supervisor in the library when I graduated from Wheaton in 2002, and they certainly carried FT then. It was well know among the students in the Political Science department, if only for the in/famous “Symposium” regarding the usurping of legislative processes by the judiciary.
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