As spring nudges into summer, it’s been a feverish season of protest and partisanship. College campuses and Congress alike have been afflicted.

But take a step back from heated debates about the so-called nuclear option, and reflect on unexpectedly quiet successes at Loyola and Middlebury colleges this past weekend. Then ask yourself what it might mean in terms of a sane de-escalation of our domestic politics.

Months ago, Mayor Giuliani had been asked by the students of those two institutions to give their graduation address. This year’s senior class had been freshmen for only a few days when terrorist attacks changed their lives and our country forever. The class of 2005 is the class of September 11. They wanted the mayor of our city during that crisis to help frame their college experience with some parting words of wisdom.

Attempting to hijack this sentiment and substance to score partisan political points should be off-limits for folks of every ideological stripe. But that didn’t stop some activists from announcing their intention to protest Mr. Giuliani.

This is where their superficially opposite form of ideological intolerance becomes kind of funny. The protesters couldn’t decide whether Mr. Giuliani was too liberal or too conservative.

When committed liberals consider you too conservative and right-wing absolutists call you a liberal, chances are you’re squarely in the commonsense center of America.

The extremes always exaggerate their real numbers and influence by screaming the loudest. Forget for a moment the always contentious issue of whether there is a left- or right-wing media bias, and let’s all concede that there is a conflict bias in the news business.

News of the impending protests was broadcast around the nation. A handful of activists protesting Mr. Giuliani at Middlebury made news by publishing a cartoon of the former mayor looking like Hitler in the student newspaper next to letters expressing their heated displeasure with his selection.

A press release from a right-wing group whose Web site promotes a search for heretics on Catholic college campuses successfully influenced the archbishop of Baltimore to say via a statement that he would not be attending the graduation because Mr. Giuliani – although personally opposed to abortion – supports a woman’s right to choose. This was greeted as juicy news by overactive 2008-watchers until it was revealed that his eminence does not routinely attend Loyola College’s graduation.

On Friday, Mr. Giuliani arrived at the Loyola graduation. Reporters clustered to gain a front-row seat at the expected conflict. What they found were less than a half-dozen protesters standing outside in the rain, while more than 1,600 students and their parents gave the former mayor a standing ovation after his address. The Baltimore Sun quoted graduate Brian Pramberger as saying Mr. Giuliani’s abortion views “don’t have anything to do with our educations … I thought it was a good speech.”

On Sunday, the mayor arrived in Howard Dean’s home state of Vermont. Out of a graduating class of 554 students, roughly a dozen sat self-muzzled with red bandannas covering their mouths in a silent form of protest. Dissent was present, but there was not much conflict to speak of.

In an interview with the school newspaper, the Middlebury Campus, a professor of political science, Eric Davis, approvingly quoted a comment Mr. Giuliani gave at University of Colorado at Boulder – home to Ward Churchill – in which the former mayor said: “I don’t think we should be upset by the fact that we disagree; what we need to remove is how angry we get about it.”

It is significant that at both Loyola and Middlebury, Mr. Giuliani gave much the same speech on the importance of leadership. Beset by small numbers of activists on both the left and right, he refused to slant his remarks to suit the supposed biases of the audience.

But the courage of conviction is something that many political figures at the center of the political spectrum have too often lacked in the past, to the detriment of our national dialogue. Witness the back-and-forth but ultimately successful struggle of the bipartisan group of 14 senators who forged a constructive compromise over the objections of lockstep party loyalists on the bitterly fought question of filibusters and judicial confirmations.

As the over-hyped activists at Loyola and Middlebury indicate, the extremes may be deeply divided, but the vast majority of us would like to work together and focus on shared solutions. A nationwide poll released four days ago by Harris Interactive quantified this principled impulse, showing that “85 percent of adults believe we need more elected politicians who will vote independently rather than on party lines.” If leaders can hear beyond the screams of the extremes, maybe they will listen to this unmistakable message increasingly in the future.