You don’t want to make a practice of inviting financial criminals among your graduates to give commencement speeches on their way to jail.
For some schools – Wharton comes to mind – this would guarantee nothing but criminals for graduation speakers into the foreseeable future.
New York University, grasping the problem, said no to its own Charles Wilk, just convicted of “conspiracy to defraud the government and aiding in the filing of a false tax return.”
Or rather NYU said no to Wilk’s judge, who made the speech part of his sentence.
Wilk’s comrade in crime, Jeffrey Greenstein, did indeed address his alma mater, the University of Washington, on the joys and sorrows of massive tax evasion schemes.