Every year around this time, as the flowers bloom and the birds nest, controversy breaks out on campus. It's graduation season, and part of the tradition is for students to become terribly irate about their school's chosen commencement speaker.

Sometimes, protests and outrage would seem to be part of the plan: When Brigham Young brought in former vice president Dick Cheney (2007), when the University of Georgia brought in Clarence Thomas (2008), or when Evergreen State College brought in death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (1999), controversy was predictable and was part of the event. At other times, though, there is controversy because the chosen speaker is too bland, too lightweight, too irrelevant, or too apolitical -- in other words, there is controversy because commencement does not offer an occasion for strong controversy: Hence the protests that surrounded actor and student James Franco's commencement speech at UCLA (2009) or Jerry Springer's appearance at Northwestern (2008).

It really doesn't matter who the school decides to bring in. Students--who often have a role in the decision--will protest any speaker. Jane Goodall, Barbara Bush, Salman Rushdie, Chris Matthews, Julian Bond, Meg Whitman, John McCain, Jonny Moseley, and, last but not least, President Obama have all sparked opposition, outrage, upset, and ire when they accepted invitations to speak at commencement.

There's a knee-jerk component to all this, one rooted in students' lack of clarity about what the purpose of commencement is and what it means to listen to ideas that challenge one to think in new ways. They tend to confuse an invitation with an endorsement--and can get offended when invitations go to people whose views differ radically from their own. At the same time, though, they also get offended when the commencement speaker is not a political lightning rod. In this sense, commencement tends to crystallize--in sadly ironic ways--some of the operative confusions of campus life. As FIRE has shown us, it's the rare campus that does not have a speech code, and that does not teach students in a thousand little ways that they have a right not to be offended, and that the proper response to unwelcome speech is emote angrily while trying to shut it down.

You have to bear all this in mind when considering individual cases of commencement controversy. They are ritualistic, repetitive, rote enactments -- even though the folks involved tend not to have any sense of how stylized and routine their responses are. That's certainly the case at Brandeis, where Israeli ambassador Michael Oren will be speaking at this year's graduation. Oren was the target of some truly outrageous student-led attempts at heckler-vetoing at UC Irvine this winter, and now certain Brandeis students--and even some faculty--are up in arms about the decision to bring Oren to graduation.

Small wonder, really. Brandeis has a bad record on speech. FIRE gives them a red light rating for its speech codes--and if you follow these sorts of things, you'll remember that a couple of years ago, Brandeis made headlines when students with thin skins and small minds nearly compelled administrators to destroy the career of a professor who had simply explained, as part of a history lesson, how the term "wetback" originated. Brandeis students have good reason to believe that they should not have to listen to ideas, perspectives, or even factual accounts that bother them. Those who would prevent Oren from speaking--who accuse the university of "insensitivity" in its choice--are showing that they have learned their lesson well.

There's a fine point to be made here. Protest is fine--because it stirs debate, and that's healthy. Brandeis is busily arguing the merits of inviting Oren, and while some say it's a shame to see commencement marred by controversy, it's also the case that the decision to invite Oren has become a huge teaching moment--a short course in the free exchange of ideas and the merits of reasoned argument--and that's a fitting thing for commencement to be. After all, in recent years, Brandeis has hosted a range of speakers (at commencement and other events) who hold precisely the critical views on Israel that protesters are finding lacking in Oren: These include, according to Jewish Week, "Jimmy Carter, defending his assertion that Israel was an 'apartheid' state; Justice Richard Goldstone, whose report on the Gaza war singled Israel out, for war crimes; playwright Tony Kushner, who has criticized Israel; and Jordanian Prince Hassan bin Talal." Surely Oren has a place within this debate, too--and surely Brandeis cannot be accused, as one student wrote, of "marginalizing dissenting opinions by bringing a partisan, divisive speaker to commencement."

My favorite commencement speech, by the way, was the one Dr. Seuss delivered--against his own better judgement--at Lake Forest College in 1977.

More on 2010 commencement speakers--who include David Axelrod, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, and Rachel Maddow--here and here.