AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has withdrawn as commencement speaker at Vassar College following student backlash over his border policies — a decision that has stirred division at the elite "Little Ivy" school in upstate New York.
Johnson, who served in the second Obama administration, will be replaced by actor John Leguizamo, who the college announced has agreed to deliver the May 22 commencement speech.
The switch in commencement speaker has sparked heated online debate among students and alumni, with one camp opposed to what one student called Johnson's "violence on marginalized peoples" and the other camp complaining of runaway "woke" politics.
The controversy deepened after a story that had quoted students referring to Johnson as guilty of "war crimes" — and which warned of "protest and disruption" should he speak — was deleted from Vassar's student newspaper website, the Miscellany News.
As of Monday, a link to the story was redirecting instead to a statement by Johnson, in which he defended his career at DHS and explained that he stepped down because, "I believe commencements should be joyous, tension-free events."
"I do not seek to be the object of controversy or speak at a commencement where students will object to me," he wrote.
Johnson, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has delivered some one dozen commencement speeches around the country; he declined to speak to Insider, except to ask that his full statement speak for itself.
Johnson's late father, Jeh Vincent Johnson, was a highly-respected architecture professor at Vassar for four decades, until his retirement in 2001.
"I think it's an overly woke response," alumni Victoria Balfour told Insider.
"Johnson is a former cabinet secretary. He grew up in town, and his father was very revered," added Balfour, a retired journalist now living in Raleigh, NC.
"It's just so petty and such an overreaction. I feel bad for him."
Johnson's selection as commencement speaker had been heralded in a Vassar press release last month.
It noted that as the young son of a beloved professor, Johnson had enjoyed watching the commencement speeches of Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1968 and activist Gloria Steinem in 1969.
"Ever since then, I've always thought Commencements were special," Johnson was quoted saying.
But a Feb. 16 story in the student newspaper, The Miscellany News, reported that many in the student body did not think a Johnson commencement speech would be special at all.
"For many students — particularly the graduating class — the selection of Johnson as this year's commencement speaker was perceived as a strikingly tone-deaf blow to Vassar's integrity and community values," according to a cached version of the since-removed story.
The deleted piece included a link to a story in The Hill about Johnson bowing out of a commencement speech at the University of Southern California in 2019, after similar student opposition.
It also included comments from Vassar Student Association Vice President Ryan Mazurkeivicz, a graduating senior.
Mazurkievicz said he and VSA President Gabi James, also a graduating senior, had brought their concerns about Johnson to Vassar President Elizabeth Bradley.
"We're not thrilled, and this is not who we would have chosen as speaker," Mazurkeivicz is quoted saying in the deleted story.
"Other people are significantly more upset than we are," Mazurkeivicz added, according to the deleted post. "It was a matter of just saying openly and honestly, 'This is how we feel.' In terms of the situation being what it is, I would like to give President Bradley credit that she listened."
Bradley, in turn, has pushed back hard against any indication that Vassar played a role in Johnson stepping down.
"The decision to withdraw was wholly Secretary Johnson's and we felt we needed to respect his decision," Bradley told Insider in an emailed statement.
"We continue to have great respect for Secretary Johnson," Bradley said.
"We at Vassar believe that engaging with people who have different viewpoints is essential to learning," Bradley said in the statement. "Johnson felt that Commencement was a time for celebration and did not want to add any contention to that day."
Students quoted in the deleted student newspaper story cited Johnson's role in opening detention centers at the US-Mexico border nearly 20 years ago.
"I'm sure Vassar can find someone to speak who isn't responsible for what amounts to war crimes," a 2014 Vassar graduate, Max Lapides, told The Miscellany News in the deleted article.
"I think many students will refuse to indulge such a speaker," agreed graduating senior Harriet Rose-Barwick. "And if he does end up coming, the administration should expect student protest and disruption."
Another graduating senior, Ethan Rose, told the paper, "It just seems to me that asking that a commencement speaker not have a record of overseeing the construction of inhumane detention facilities is a pretty low bar."
Johnson announced he would not give the speech a week after the story ran, as first reported February 17 by a local radio station, WPDH in Poughkeepsie.
Since then, angry comments have been flooding the Legal Insurrection conservative blog, and continue to fill the comments sections of the Miscellany News, with students and alumni weighing in for and against Johnson speaking.
"Shameful," a commenter named "Jane" wrote last week. "Shame on President Bradley for bowing to this childish bunch. Imagine cancelling a Black man who served in the Obama administration for an ACTOR! This is insanity and makes Vassar look terrible. "
Balfour, a retired journalist now living in Raleigh, NC, told Insider she was disappointed in the trend at colleges of selecting "safe" celebrities as commencement speakers.
"When I graduated in '77 the speaker was Shirley Chisholm," she said.
"They've just had a lot of non-serious people, a lot of people in the entertainment industry lately."
Commencement speakers at Vassar have been a mix of celebrities and non-celebrities. Energy technology innovator Jessica O. Matthews spoke last year; film producer Jason Blum the year before. Other speakers have included Tom Hanks in 2014, Lisa Kudrow in 2010 and Samuel L. Jackson in 2004.
On Monday, the Miscellany News story link was still directing to Johnson's statement instead.
"We decided to pull the article off our website due to some factual inaccuracies caused by some quick reporting, and we're working to address them thoroughly," Miscellany News Editor told Insider in an email.
