Michael Smerconish responds to Dickinson College removing him as commencement speaker

Dickinson College has revoked its invitation for Michael Smerconish to speak at its upcoming commencement.

Dickinson president John E. Jones III said in a statement that the SiriusXM and CNN host “faced overwhelming opposition from our faculty and students, particularly after recent comments he made.” Jones didn’t offer any specifics about which comments drew the ire of students and faculty. In a separate statement, the college said Smerconish had become “a distraction.”

In a statement posted on his website Monday, Smerconish cited complaints over passages from his 2004 book, Flying Blind, which was written in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks. In particular, detractors cited Smerconish’s criticism of TSA agents’ screening policy surrounding Arabs and Muslims.

An editorial in The Dickinsonian, the student newspaper, argued the class of 2024 deserved better than Smerconish as commencement speaker “because of his statements in support of the racial profiling of Arab Americans and Muslims in his 2004 book ‘Flying Blind,’ views which he has continued to stand by.”

The Dickinson College Coalition for Mutual Liberation gathered 828 signatures from students, faculty, staff, and parents calling for Smerconish’s removal, according The Dickinsonian.

Speaking to The Inquirer, Smerconish said that critics are distorting words he wrote 20 years ago, and that his viewpoints are more nuanced than a simple call for racial profiling. It’s the reason he chose to respond with a lengthy statement, so there was a full record from his perspective.

“You can tell by reading it that I’m angry about [Dickinson’s decision], and disappointed, and sad,” Smerconish said. “And I wanted to be able to explain all of that not limited by a sentence fragment.”

Smerconish said critics have “surgically selected quotes” from his book and subsequent columns he has written “that suit their narrative.” He said the larger point of his book was focused on a Department of Transportation policy that prevented “more than two individuals of any particular ethnicity from being singled out at the same time for secondary screening” at airports.

“I believed that policy to be ludicrous then — and still do now,” Smerconish wrote.

Smerconish said the school is setting a terrible precedent by succumbing to a “censorship-fueled campaign,” pointing out Dickinson hailed the fact he authored Flying Blind and six other books in a news release announcing him as commencement speaker.

“Those students who demanded I not speak had better hope that twenty years from now, when they are looking for a job, no one will look at everything they said and did two decades earlier, yanking it out of context and using it as a weapon of personal destruction,” Smerconish wrote.

It is unclear who will replace Smerconish as Dickinson’s commencement speaker. A spokesperson for the school said they are still in the process of adjusting their commencement program.

Graduation ceremonies at Dickinson College are scheduled for Sunday, May 19.

Dickinson and colleges across the country are adjusting their commencement plans amid protests of Israel’s war in Gaza. Columbia University canceled its two main commencement ceremonies in favor of “Class Days and school-level ceremonies,” while pro-Palestinian protesters created a minor disturbance at University of Michigan’s commencement over the weekend.

Commencement at the University of Pennsylvania is scheduled for Monday, May 20, at Franklin Field. The school, which has grappled with how to deal with an encampment of protesters, hasn’t announced any major changes to its graduation schedule.