UVM announced Ben Stein as its commencement speaker -- and shortly afterwards, the angry emails began flying. And not just from Vermonters: Richard Dawkins wrote to UVM's president that he was "dismayed" at the choice.
So the president of UVM got on the phone with Stein to alert him to the backlash, and Stein agreed not to speak at UVM. But Stein wasn't happy about it. Check out what he wrote to the Burlington Free Press in an email:
Stein called the university’s response to the furor “chicken sh**, and you can quote me on that.”
But one of the most embarrassing facets of the whole embarrassing episode is Stein's comment that the president of UVM "endlessly, endlessly asked me to do it" for a discount (again, from the Burlington Free Press.) And that the president used family connections to ask Stein to speak (apparently some best-friend/brother-in-law connection). Yes, everyone knows budgets are being cut at UVM, but really? Geez.
End result: Howard Dean will be UVM's commencement speaker. I don't predict any protests.
Side comment: I heard Ben Stein speak at an investor conference when I worked at Bloomberg News. It was an Internet/tech conference right after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 or early 2002. Interestingly, he started off making some relevant comments about how expectations of endless growth (as many dot-coms had been making) were untethered from reality, but then spent the rest of his speech talking about how much he missed his recently deceased father and how important it was to develop a strong relationship with your children. The room was unusually attentive -- instead of the usual investing spiel, he gave what was probably the first heart-felt talk ever heard at one of these confabs.
