Indiana Jones found the lost ark of campus clichés

They say never meet your heroes. It turns out Indiana Jones is no exception.

Arizona State University’s commencement this year featured exactly the kind of speaker Americans have come to expect from modern universities: a wealthy Hollywood celebrity lecturing graduates about climate change, “indigenous spirituality,” social justice, and the moral failures of Western civilization.

The sign over the modern left-wing academy reads: Let none who seek intellectual consistency enter here.

Harrison Ford told ASU graduates, “Humanity is a part of nature, not above it,” before calling for sweeping environmental action, “cultural change,” and the elevation of indigenous perspectives about the natural world. Had he remained silent, some might have mistaken him for wise. Instead, he opened his mouth and proved himself a fool.

The speech mattered not because it was unusual, but because it perfectly captured the ideology that now dominates many American universities. Had you asked ChatGPT to generate a commencement address based on ASU’s official political commitments, it would have sounded very much like this one.

The solutions offered by Hollywood activists and university administrators are the very ideas that helped produce much of the confusion in the first place.

Ford’s speech rested on a rejection of the biblical view of man. Scripture teaches that human beings are distinct from the rest of creation because they are made in the image of God. In Genesis, man is commanded to exercise dominion over the earth, not as a tyrant, but as a steward. Human beings are created to behold the glory of God in the world He made, not merely to dissolve into nature as one creature among many.

Ford rejects that distinction. But the moment he does, he collapses into contradiction. If human beings are merely another species within nature, no different in principle from wolves, termites, or algae, then why should they presume to reorganize economies, restrict energy production, and manage the global ecosystem?

The rest of nature does not hold climate summits. Ants do not draft sustainability goals. Coyotes do not issue carbon mandates.

Nature simply acts according to its nature. That is the emptiness of leftism. Ford made millions pretending to be heroes who could save the day. Now, sliding into old age, he has no answer for anyone. The left thrives on captive audiences. Put its spokesmen outside the lecture hall, and the whole performance looks ridiculous.

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Ironically, Ford’s own activism depends on the very biblical framework he rejects. The claim that mankind has a moral duty to care for the world makes sense only if man occupies a unique place above the rest of creation. Stewardship presupposes authority.

The modern environmental movement tries to erase the biblical doctrine of dominion while quietly smuggling morality back in whenever moral action becomes necessary. Yet it cannot explain where such morality comes from. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Why, then, should man not follow suit?

Ford also praised indigenous communities for understanding that “the trees, the mountain, water, soil are not commodities. They are relatives.”

This romanticized view of indigenous life now comes standard in university rhetoric. It also bears little resemblance to history. Human beings across cultures, ancient and modern, have altered landscapes, hunted animals to extinction, waged wars, enslaved rivals, and struggled ruthlessly for survival. Indigenous tribes were not mystical ecological saints floating above ordinary human nature.

One cannot help noticing the contradiction built into these speeches. ASU routinely acknowledges that it sits on indigenous land. Fine. If that confession is sincere, when exactly does the university plan to return the property? ASU confesses the theft, keeps the land, and then congratulates itself for moral awareness. That is not repentance. That is performance.

And what about Ford himself?

He owns multiple luxury properties and has spent decades enjoying private aviation, industrial modernity, and immense personal wealth. Has he offered to return any of his land? Has he proposed downsizing his estates for the sake of climate justice? The modern progressive elite increasingly resembles a secular priesthood that demands sacrifice from everyone except itself.

Ford also repeated the now-obligatory oppressor-oppressed framework that dominates university discourse. Every social question gets filtered through the same categories: oppressor versus oppressed, colonizer versus marginalized, privileged versus victimized.

That framework has become so totalizing that universities no longer even pretend to offer intellectual diversity on first questions about human nature, morality, or society. In their world, you are either oppressed or an oppressor, and those are the only categories available for interpreting history.

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That raises an obvious question: Will ASU ever invite a commencement speaker who openly defends the American founding, free markets, Christianity, or the biblical doctrine of man?

Or will commencement remain an ideological pep rally, one last progressive sermon after four years of DEI, decolonization, and critical-theory mush?

To Ford’s credit, he did say one thing that was undeniably true. Speaking to the graduates, he admitted, "The world you're stepping into, the world my generation left you, is a real mess."

On that point, he was right. But then he instructed the students to clean it up and presumably climbed into a private jet back to one of his luxury homes.

The ideas pushed by Hollywood activists and university administrators are the very ideas that helped produce the confusion in the first place: hostility to the biblical view of man, contempt for America’s inheritance, and utopian promises of social transformation through centralized moral activism.

ASU’s graduates deserved better than another lecture in fashionable conformity. A university worthy of the name would expose students to competing visions of humanity and the good life. Instead, they got Harrison Ford declaring that mankind is not above nature, moments before assigning mankind the duty to save the planet and clean up after him.

The sign over the modern left-wing academy reads: Let none who seek intellectual consistency enter here.