Conservative Graduate Who Left Auditorium During Merrick Garland Speech Breaks Silence

Conservative Graduate Who Left Auditorium During Merrick Garland Speech Breaks Silence


As college graduation season approaches, many schools have already announced their commencement speakers for this year’s special occasion.

With students completing their coursework and getting ready for commencement, a woman who gained attention last year for standing up and walking out of Harvard University’s commencement ceremony during Attorney General Merrick Garland’s address has declared that she would do the same thing again, Fox News Digital is reporting.

Emma Heussner, a resident of Washington, D.C., earned a master’s degree in psychology from Harvard. She made headlines last year after she walked out of her own graduation ceremony due to her dissatisfaction with the content of Garland’s speech.

Heussner, who currently works in social media, said she’d absolutely do it over again.

“I would do it again,” she told Fox News Digital over the weekend, going on to explain her reasoning.

“Conservatives are coined as the ‘silent majority’ and look where that’s gotten us,” she said. “Students and their parents are now fighting for regular, not sexualized, curriculum in K-12.”

“As long as conservatives are silent, we are compliant with how far we let the left push their agenda,” she continued.

“Universities [should] be places that teach students how to think and challenge our beliefs. They should encourage students to debate and learn from other perspectives,” she noted further.

Heussner added that “standing up for myself and my beliefs by walking out on Merrick Garland’s speech was a way for me to honor the time, money and energy spent earning my degree — while also honoring those who actually supported me throughout school.”

Those who supported her, she said, were “my friends and family who were cheering me on.”

Huessner also discussed the responses she received to her action last year.

“The support I got from strangers on the internet was overwhelmingly positive. So many people I’ve never met rallied behind me,” she told the news outlet.

“I think that’s partially because there aren’t many signs of intelligent life (AKA conservatives at Ivy League schools) who make a statement by speaking out against the propaganda otherwise pushed on us as students,” she noted further.

“I understand the criticism I received from a few, too. They believed it was hypocritical and ungrateful of me to not endure Garland’s speech,” she added.

But that said, “I think it was more important to spend my graduation with my family than waste time sitting through a politicized speech that made students like me feel unwelcome and complacent,” she noted further.

Heussner went on to say that Garland’s ideology and the content of his speech last year “didn’t represent me or what my academic career taught me to think independently [about].” Instead, she described his speech as “ostracizing” those who hold different views.

Last year she ignited a strong reaction from many corners after she shared on Twitter that she had “just walked out of Harvard’s graduation because I didn’t want to listen to Merrick Garland talk about himself for 30 minutes.”

She said “by the time Merrick Garland finally started speaking, it was very much — I think he was trying to be inspirational and motivating, as in, ‘You guys are responsible for making the world a better place.'”

“But the way it read was very much like, ‘This country sucks and you guys can fix it,'” she added.


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