Following a wave of student and faculty protests, a former Obama administration Cabinet official has withdrawn as the commencement speaker for a university graduation ceremony later this month.
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson officially withdrew as the commencement speaker for the University of Southern California Gould School of Law following complaints from students and faculty over the Obama administration’s treatment of illegal immigrants during his tenure as secretary (December 2013 through the end of Obama’s administration).
USC Gould School of Law Dean Andrew Guzman announced Johnson’s decision in an email to the school late last week, citing his desire for the ceremony to be free of “tension and political controversy,” after Guzman informed him that a number of students and faculty took issue with the way he handled the immigration crisis.
The controversy over Johnson’s selection first came to light after two Latino professors at the school, Daria Roithmayr and David Cruz, penned a letter to the dean complaining about his choice of speaker, claiming that Johnson went as far as to “normalize state violence.”
“USC’s choice to invite Secretary Johnson to speak normalizes illegal state violence. Inviting him to speak to the graduating class legitimates what federal courts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized as a fundamental betrayal of core values,” wrote Roithmayr and Cruz. “Johnson has repeatedly failed to respect legal and moral limits on the use of government-sponsored coercive force, particularly against children, and has demonstrated a morally repugnant willingness to use those who are most vulnerable among us as means to an end.”
Last month, in an interview with National Public Radio, Johnson admitted that the Obama administration had taken steps to expand family detention of illegal immigrant families following the surge of illegal immigrants coming across the border from Central America in 2014.
“We expanded family detention. You’re correct. When I was in office, I was surprised to learn that of 34,000 beds, we only had 95 detention beds for families,” said Johnson. “So we expanded that, and anecdotally we saw that families were surprised that we had done that and were calling back home to Central America to say that they were being detained.”
John Patrick (@john_pat_rick) is a graduate of Canisius College and Georgia Southern University. He interned for Red Alert Politics during the summer of 2012 and has continued to contribute regularly.
