White and Delightsome

Graduation yesterday at Utah Valley University. Although I skipped my own graduation ceremonies, figuring that what I had learned was enough for me, I have enjoyed attending the graduations of my own students, pleased to get to shake their hands and congratulate them and celebrate their hard work and accomplishment.

This graduation was one I'd been anticipating for over four years. When Najib Niazi arrived at what was then UVSC from Afghanistan, sponsored by Scott Carrier, for whom he had translated during the war, he brought me a chapan that looks a lot like the three chapans worn by the men at the left (photo from a Swedish blog). I told Najib that I would wear it when he graduated. Yesterday I wore the chapan as I lined up with my faculty colleagues in their colorful academic robes, proud of Najib and happy to see him wave and smile as he passed by the faculty with his fellow students.

The morning was spoiled by the graduation speech given by teary-eyed Dr. Robert C. Gay, CEO of Huntsman Gay Global Capital (and former colleague of Mitt Romney in Bain Capital).

We (and by we I mean the Atheists and Methodists and Muslims and Mormons and Buddhists and Catholics and so many others at our state University) were assaulted by a simpering millionaire who intimated that Africans do not treat children charitably and that they know nothing about service unless they are taught by the millionaire Mormon's Eagle Scout son. He said that the deviations of a secular world will lead us astray, that pitiful liberals at Harvard censored the printed version of Mother Teresa's commencement address about abortion as murder, that Jesus is the way.

I squirmed and cursed and wrote pointed obscenities in my notebook as I thought about Najib and his Muslim friends and family-to-be who were sitting in the audience.

While Mr. Gay pretended to be Mother Teresa, they sat there dumbfounded.

As did I.

Najib, please accept my heartfelt apology. Najib, this celebrated man, this captain of capitalism, this philanthropic Mormon, this man of power and wealth -- this man is simply uneducated.

Take your honors B.S. in Business, take your MBA, if that's what you choose, take the fine education that you already have, and make more of it than this man has. Huck Finn, whom you met and wrote about in the class with me and Alex and Scott, is a much finer model for a good life.

While you do that, charitable man that you are, I'll look into the world through the less charitable face of the man to the right of the photo and think angrily about the man who brought his shameful disrespect into our celebration.