Holder at Vassar

Four students and I saw Attorney General Holder speak at Vassar College yesterday.

In a fifteen-minute session before his formal speech, Holder took questions from about 75 high school students in a small lecture room. I was impressed with his answers. Most of the time, when public people address young kids, they condescend. Holder's answers were complex, nuanced and forthright. He assumed that the students understood their own questions -- many of which were knowledgable and sophisticated -- and gave his actual opinion.

Nothing, he said, however, was all that surprising or new.

Still, I appreciate the pro-intellectual bent of this administration. When asked about security threats, Holder did not bash the previous adminsitration, and he acknowledged the difficulty of facing real dangers while thinking about civil liberties. When asked about extraordinary renditions, he condemned torture in principle and practice, and made clear -- on intellectual, not personal terms -- that the rejected the view of people like Dick Cheney that torture is necessary.

Holder's speech to a larger crowd in the chapel was unremarkable at best. He spoke on public service, but read the message as if it were written by an aid. It probably was. The whole thing was 15 minutes long and said nothing interesting at all.

On a side note, I found Vassar's approach to him surprisingly obsequious. I'm sure it's no small thing to get the sitting AG to come, but Bates did it all the time and did not fawn and thank and thank and thank the way Vassar did. Even Millbrook does not act so grateful for visits from important personages. It made certain aspects of his visit seem like the arrival of a rock star rather than the speech of a public servant.