After students and faculty at Georgetown successfully campaigned to cancel commencement speaker Morton Schapiro over his support for Israel, there is a similar movement to cancel NYU Professor and author Jonathan Haidt as the graduation speaker at New York University. Haidt is being targeted for his opposition to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and, ironically, his opposition to cancel culture.
Haidt is the author of The Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind. He has written extensively against the culture of orthodoxy and viewpoint intolerance in higher education.
He is also the cofounder of the online Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit “dedicated to defending and modeling the norms of open inquiry and constructive disagreement.”
In a May 6 column, senior Mehr Kotval described Haidt as “an anti-woke author who has consistently patronized student activists” and called his selection as commencement speaker a “last parting gift of disrespect” from NYU.
The Student Government Association condemned the choice and, in a May 5 open letter, called his “deeply unsettling” selection unacceptable, accusing him of “making homophobic remarks in a class and public misconceptions about transgender identity.”
What is most striking about these complaints is that they captured perfectly the sense of orthodoxy in higher education, the very thing that Haidt and some of us have been addressing in our writings.
The fact that he is considered “anti-woke” and holds divergent views is considered intolerable at a university that has largely purged conservative, libertarian, and contrarian views from its faculty.
There is, of course, no problem with speakers holding far-left viewpoints. Likewise, the warm reception given to Justice Sonia Sotomayor has not been extended to other potential justices on the Supreme Court, such as Justice Clarence Thomas.
As I wrote earlier, this year’s commencement speakers list continues to reflect the same universal preference for Democratic political figures and liberal figures. Indeed, this year, schools seem to be doubling down with figures ranging from Nancy Pelosi (Notre Dame de Namur University) to Jamie Raskin (American University and Goucher College) to candidates like James Talarico (Paul Quinn College). There is no subtlety in their selection or their messages. Pelosi slammed the GOP and Trump while Talarico gave effectively a stump speech on fighting the billionaires.
The strained rationalization for the cancel campaign was illustrated in the quote from Grayson Stevenson, the outgoing sophomore class president at N.Y.U., who said, “I don’t think that students saying that the speaker doesn’t represent our values is the same thing as students being incapable of hearing opposing viewpoints. Those are two very different things.”
No, it says you should not have to listen to “hearing opposing viewpoints.” You are physically capable of hearing them, but you have been taught throughout your education that you should not be subjected to views that they disagree with or find triggering.
I would expect that, given his long fight for intellectual diversity, Haidt will not prove as easy to get to self-cancel. Often, speakers targeted in these campaigns do not want to risk the embarrassing protests or interruptions during a speech.
The campaign, however, has likely succeeded as a warning to other administrators that they need to select speakers who run from the left to the far left, or face such complications or confrontations.
Haidt, who describes himself as “a non-partisan centrist,” has written about the very sentiments expressed in the campaign against him at NYU. He is a critic of Herbert Marcuse, who called for a new type of “liberating” tolerance which is achieved through suppressing non-progressive voices.
He should give this commencement speech and start with his prior views on the scourge of viewpoint intolerance in higher education:
“Truth is a process, not just an end-state. The Righteous Mind was about the obstacles to that process, such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, tribalism, and the worship of sacred values. Given the many ways that our moral psychology warps our reasoning, it’s a wonder we’ve gotten as far as we have, as a species. That’s what’s so brilliant about science: it is a way of putting people together so that they challenge each other and cancel out each others’ confirmation biases and tribal commitments. The truth emerges from the interaction of flawed individuals.”
Whenever I read about how difficult the job market and dating scene are for recent college grads I remember stories like this and smile.
Haidt’s name is so often associated with ethics and ethical for those who don’t want him to speak.. Not a surprise as they lack a scintilla of it.
I feel somewhat fortunate that both my daughters finished their formal education prior to the insanity that now exists in academia. My older daughter completed her undergraduate degree at a left-wing college in Massachusetts (Amherst) so by the time she finished college she was already converted to “we are not going to discuss that” attitude. This was cemented when she finished her masters at NYU. My other, younger daughter completed her undergraduate ina university in Denver (Regis) before insanity totally captured Colorado in its grips. She completed her graduate degree in a local Midwest university (Maryville) and she has remained totally a-political. While both completed formal education before total insanity struck, one of them was dondemned to the liberal bias thy the time she finished her Bachelor degree meaning a good portion of her psyche is calm. My other daughter was apparently not exposed to such idiocy. No young, aspiring student should ever be subject to this type of thining or, more properly lack of it. Shame on our universities and colleges.
The good news is that graduation speakers and what they have to say are like last month’s weather forecast. I graduated four time from college and grad schools, the last time being 2007 for a PhD degree. You could offer me a million dollars and I wouldn’t be able to tell you who any of my graduation speakers were. Moreover, not only have I forgotten who they were, I’ve forgotten what they said. The world is changed and remembered for actions, not words. Or, as the Beatles Paul McCartney put it in Elenor Rigby, verse 2, “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, no one comes near….”
I wrote NYU out of my alumni giving years ago. Perhaps the only remedy for this insanity is to vote with one’s feet and one’s wallet. An an organization which could provide college advisors, and parents with evaluation of schools who support policies such as NYU’s would be valuable.
Democrats need to ask local voters what their priorities are, instead of a top-down strategy where a political party plays Nanny State parenting the local voters. That’s why they keep losing elections.
Haidt rightly describes the eternally aggrieved ones as “coddled.” And right on cue:
As they stomp their feet: Cancel him. His ideas are “deeply disturbing.”
It is surprising that NYU invited him. That does seem like a step in the right direction.
The problem is that the truism “it won’t be like this in the real world” is becoming untrue. Now, these same delicate flowers can just run to a like-minded fascist in the HR department should their sensitivities be assaulted in the workplace.
Anonymous, you make a great point. For years I, and many others, have been saying that the grads will get a huge wake-up call in the workplace, but they are taking over the business world now and it doesn’t look good for our future. See Spain and Europe. It is over.
The question I would ask “Is the removal of this speaker truly the desire of the majority of the students at NYU”? We hear all the screaming and posturing from the usual suspects about non left speakers, but is that the majority view. In demonstrations against non left speakers I have noted that most of the time they are a small but very noisy clique.
I would suggest that maybe NYU require a vote (university ID required) by all students to truly assess what the view of the entire student body is about the speakers they are considering.
Even in the 1960’s and the demonstrations against the Viet Nam war, the demonstrators were clearly a minority of the students body if they even had a demonstration at all. It did, of course, vary from college to college. There were the thugs and rowdies of the SDS and their hangers-on but they were still a small number but extremely loud.
It’s like the No Kings protests, reportedly 8 million showed up but what does that mean? In this day of paid protestors what were the true demonstrators and what were paid off demonstrators. What is 8 million compared to 152 million voters in the last election or 340,000,000 people in the US.
Maybe the universities should ask all the students and not just the loud ones. You don’t learn anything while talking or screaming but you can learn a great deal by listening.
NYU Students cancelling their future you mean!
The most suicidal aspect of university behavior is accepting too many foreign students to get full tuition. The long-term effect is the degredation of American citizen workforce and the fallacious idea that foreign students and workers are required to make up for American shortcomings.
We need to cancel 99% of foreign student visas. Next, the H1-Bs, more numerous than exceptional.
The NYU administration should keep the speaker, use numerous security to maintain order and decorum, and try to get their pampered, narcissistic, retarded development graduates to listen to an opposing viewpoint. It would at least be an opportunity for the idjits to grow up a bit.
Universities accept full tuition-paying foreign students in order to continue to pay the exorbitant salaries paid to leftist ideologue professors who would otherwise be unemployable if they were required to find a productive job in society outside of academia. It is the salaries of these overpaid professors that saddles many current college graduates with oppressive debt that they will be unable to repay for much of their postgraduate life, if ever. What is amazing to me is that these social justice warrior students do not see that they are being played as economically useful idiots in order to finance the lifestyles of their liberal professors. I guess that’s the desired result of indoctrinating students rather than teaching them to think and reason.
Vincente,
Indeed, US higher education pays the highest salaries in the world. Not only to professors, though, but even more so to administrators: deans, presidents, provosts, associates and assistant deans and provosts, diversity managers, etc. Since universities receive millions in grants and subsidies, the taxpayer is on the hook in addition to the tuition paying students. Tuition is so high because of growing demand triggered by the government giving student loans.
Nobody does Fascism like the left does Fascism. The far left has always been and always will be Fascists. And leftwing teachers successfully tied Fascism to the right, as if a committed Socialist like Hitler was right wing.
Commit suicide please.
“Commit suicide please” says our resident parasitic juvenile delinquent. This person epitomizes the point being made about our schools today. Uneducated, close-minded, selfish, unable to think critically and just a sad excuse for what was once debatable discussions.
I DEMAND and END to ALL Federal Aid and Loan backing for colleges
Let them FUND THEMSELVES!
You demand? You silly clown.
Jonathan Haidt wrote, “The truth emerges from the interaction of flawed individuals.”
Interesting, sounds like the organizing principle of the U.S. Constitution: assume humans are naturally flawed and balance them so that the flaws cancel out. Worked for 250 years. Soviet communism lasted only 70 years. Chinese communism lasted even less time, now that the CCP is basically a nationalist and quasi-capitalist party (kind of sounds like fascism, no?).
Now our illustrious eggheads want to ditch the Constitution with their sophomore-bull-session version of social justice. They are the bleeding edge of mouse utopia. Thanks to these idiot savants, I fear the world is heading back to fascism, via faux communism. We’ll have an all-powerful Democrat Party presiding over an oligarchy presiding over a slave class of Malthusian labor, just like in China: fascism with a communist face.
I fear the world is heading back to fascism????
And so the entire US college and university system continues to commit slow suicide. With all due respect to Professor Turley and his understandable preoccupation with the institutes essential to his career as an educator, this has become the status quo. It is no longer news, in any way novel, or imo even worthy of column space. YMMV.
Suicide? Hardly. Know of any university or college that has committed death by suicide? None in fact.
They are thriving in fact.
Not sure where “suicide” was mentioned or in which context, but you may be interested in learning about the
concept of “Suicidal Empathy” by Saad Gad.
Herbert Marcuse’s 1965 essay on the ‘repressive tolerance’ of Western Civilization was the seminal work giving birth to leftist PC cancel culture, advocating in effect for neoMarxist ‘repressive intolerance’. Which is exactly what the calls for Haidt’s cancellation are.
“Marxism – the opium of the intellectuals” – Raymond Aron.
The problem is with writers. All they want to do is use their imagination and write about their fantasies. It’s the basis for most Science fiction. it’s easy for them to imagine a utopia to write about. But few writers like to work so, commies dominate the field of fantasy (see hollywood). Always selling you on their imagined worlds like it’s a franchise to profit off of.