The College Fix

The Right called it new-age gobbledygook. The Left thought it was science bashing.

It seems media mogul Oprah Winfrey has not only lost her touch (does anyone watch OWN?) – but people of all stripes agree she is a spiritual nut job.

Writing in National Review, Charles C. W. Cooke described her Harvard University commencement address last week – during which she was also bestowed with an honorary doctorate – a “dose of New Age hokum.”

… Perhaps the worst thing about Winfrey’s spiel — and almost all others like it — is that it was premised on the rotten and mendacious conceit that there are never any real instances in which conflicting political prerogatives make compromise impossible. The problem with America, in this view, is never legitimate difference of opinion, and always the abstract notion of “politics.” “If only we could agree!” is the unspoken cry.

Oprah’s second suggestion was that we should pretend that conflict is a mirage and difficult choices a myth contrived by troublemakers. Advocating for immigration reform, she suggested that “it’s possible to both enforce our laws and, at the same time, embrace the words on the Statue of Liberty that have welcomed generations of huddled masses to our shores . . . We can do both.”

Oh, well that’s good then. One wonders why we debate these things at all. For instance, if we can just “do both” at every political juncture, then we don’t need a Congress. That should save some money and angst.

Suffice it to say that telling a group of young people that we can have everything if we just want it enough is, as the president might put it, “not optimal.” …

And on the Left, influential atheist blogger Jerry Coyne, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a Harvard alum, likened Oprah’s comments to science bashing, based on summaries of her speech from others.

According to several accounts, her talk was just a string of platitudes—but of course nearly all graduation speeches are. …

“In a commencement address at the Ivy League school outside Boston, Winfrey told the graduates that they were bound to stumble no matter how high they might rise, but that “there is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.” (Reuters)

No it isn’t, because “life” is not trying to do anything to us. Lord! Ceiling Cat!

At any rate, at least one major news outlet saw this degree for what it is: a tacit endorsement of woo and antiscientific attitudes.

At the Time Magazine “Ideas” site, Erika Christakis and Nicholas A. Christakis note … “Oprah as Harvard’s commencement speaker is an endorsement of phony science” …

‘But Oprah’s particular brand of celebrity is not a good fit for the values of a university whose motto, Veritas, means truth. Oprah’s passionate advocacy extends, unfortunately, to a hearty embrace of phony science. Critics have taken Oprah to task for years for her energetic shilling on behalf of peddlers of quack medicine. Most notoriously, Oprah’s validation of Jenny McCarthy’s discredited claim that vaccines cause autism has no doubt contributed to much harm through the foolish avoidance of vaccines. . . .

But this vote of confidence in Oprah sends a troubling message at precisely the time when American universities need to do more, not less, to advance the cause of reason. As former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis, pointedly noted in a blog post about his objections, “It seems very odd for Harvard to honor such a high profile popularizer of the irrational. I can’t square this in my mind, at a time when political and religious nonsense so imperil the rule of reason in this allegedly enlightened democracy and around the world.’

Indeed! What were the folks at Harvard thinking when they extended this invitation?

Poor Dr. Winfrey – lampooned by the right and the left? Well, she still has her billions.

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