I ran into University of Minnesota Law School Dean William McGeveran at the May 13 Cardozo Society Dinner in Minneapolis. I greeted him warmly and he reciprocated. The timing slightly anticipated Tim Walz’s befoulment of the law school commencement with his partisan and disgusting speech at the ceremony on May 17 that weekend. Walz’s speech made waves at USA Today, Fox News, and elsewhere.
I wrote Dean McGeveran on May 18, on the morning after Walz’s speech. Recalling my own law school commencement ceremony in 1979, I noted that it featured former Rep. and future Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser as the speaker and that his speech, by contrast with Walz’s, fit the ceremony. I wrote that “I greatly admired [Fraser’s] decency and sense of occasion” and wondered “if you set any parameters on Walz’s speech or just relied on his own sense of the occasion.” I also asked whether he thought Walz’s speech was appropriate.
Dean McGeveran took a while before responding to me on May 29:
Dear Mr. Johnson,
The University of Minnesota Law School has a long history of inviting elected officials to speak at commencement, along with members of the bench and bar. Past speakers at the Law School have included the late Vice President Walter Mondale ’56, former Governor Tim Pawlenty ’86, former Senator Norm Coleman, and Senator Amy Klobuchar. All our commencement speakers are invited to speak on any topic of their choosing.
Sincerely,
Dean William McGeveran
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Law School Dean’s Office | law.umn.edu
This was the entirely formulaic response Dean McGeveran adopted to respond to messages such as mine. Greg Pulles — my former boss at TCF Financial Corporation — wrote after I did and heard back sooner but received the identical response.
Perhaps the formulaic and unresponsive quality of his message accounts for Dean McGeveran’s silence regarding his opinion of the appropriateness of Walz’s speech to the occasion. At least the formulaic nature of his message suggests to me that Dean McGeveran heard from others in addition to Greg and me about Walz’s speech.
