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 “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.”
The aversion to free speech is connected to why leftist ideas are so insane (men in women’s locker rooms, sexual mutilation of children, defund the police, suicidal empathy for violent criminals, erasing national borders, communism, glee at money fleeing the city or state, etc.).
Why? Because when an entire half of civilization is shielded from ever hearing counter-arguments or explanations for why they might be wrong, their ideas never get tested, refined, and strengthened.
Conservatives value free speech and are inundated with criticisms of their views 24/7 by the dominant culture, entertainment, public schools, government agencies, academia, and the like. This forces conservatives to become aware of any legitimate weaknesses others find in their views, which in turn causes them to adjust to being more realistic and rational as a defense against further attacks.
Perhaps this is analogous to why dictators that everyone is afraid to disagree with often get the worst advice, which in turn becomes a disadvantage in armed conflicts with their adversaries.
Disrespect for free speech is emerging as a major legal and political issue if not a rising mental health issue for Medicine and Law Enforcement.
Jonathan Haidt could also enlighten the faculty and students with his astute observation of student’s: “…new culture of victimhood in which people are encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense, as in an honor culture [of old]. But they must not obtain redress on their own; they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized.” This is not an appealing description of the product of the modern education system. We need to encourage more robustness, and forgiveness in social interactions.
@Arnold – well presented. Whether or not in personal agreement with Haidt who apparently has been of civil discourse and appears to be the promotion of the value of individuals and their thoughts, their actions, and their values, as well as empowering the rhetorical profession of same, the message is clearly personal attack and degredation.
Sad reality. The students who elected their Student Government Association have thereby reduced the value and acceptability of their Certification of Indoctrination (AKA, NYU Degree Diploma) with that organization’s loud and clear message.
So Sad.
250 years and the America of the American Founders is gone with the wind.
Nothing to see here, folks; move along.
DISCORDANT INTERMIXTURE MUST HAVE AN INJURIOUS TENDENCY
“We the People of the United States…secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES and OUR POSTERITY….”
– Preamble to the Constitution of the American Founders
_______________________________________________________________
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
I don’t know what it’ll take for modern parents to realize their kids are no longer getting an ‘education’ at our colleges. They really do seem to think a degree is some kind of golden ticket by virtue of its existence and the coin that crossed palms., like magic. Thanks, Obama.
James,
For a long time it was mantra, “A college degree is key to making it into the middle class!”
Now, the cost, student debt that will not be paid off till their 50s, 60s or even till they die, the shocking lack of quality is what is making many young people question the value of a college degree.
Businesses are also questioning hiring recent grads as college is NOT preparing grads for the business/corporate world aka real life.
Was talking to a friend a few weeks ago, and he said despite me NOT having a college degree, I would have a better chance of getting hired as I am professional, can communicate well, and would show up on time and not look like I just rolled out of bed or was on my way to the beach.
You claimed to be a pig farmer according to previous comments. Now you claim to be a professional?
USF said “I am professional” not “I am a professional”
Are you “A professional” because your reading comprehension sucks.
Almost All people who are the least successful in business are professional – adjective.
You do not succeed at most anything without being professional.
@Upstate
I think you are correct in every single point you just made. A degree is not fairy dust. The world does not run on fairy dust.
So they cancelled the speaker because he opposes cancel culture.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Remember, these young brainwashed dufi murdered Charlie Kirk for daring to speak to college kids and tell them there is a different viewpoint. Leftism is totalitarian; if you don’t understand that then you know nothing at all about it. It cannot allow alternate viewpoints because it will be shown for the idiocy and hateful thing that it is.
These cancellations only go one way. Some trolls have complained that Professor Turley only highlights when the Left cancels a conservative speaker, but they don’t give any examples of conservative students cancelling a liberal speaker.
Another recent example: detransitioner Chloe Cole was going to speak yesterday at the University of Washington, but had to call that off because antifa threatened violence.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/detransitioner-chloe-cole-cancels-uw-162525897.html
OldManFromKS,
Well said.
For the most part, conservatives are civil and polite and even want to hear what leftists have to say. By their own words, leftists prove conservatives are right.
What bizarre logic.
Hollywood filmmakers couldn’t come up with better farce if you held guns to their heads!
@Cindy Bragg – They already have – although this was derived from a play that was in London and eventually Broadway too. The audience doesn’t realize the intensity and evolution of thinking until the end of the first act when a surprise song lowers the curtain. Indoctrination and message propagation is occurring – look at the actions of these indoctrination camps (aka Universities), “No Kings”, Hakeem Jeffrie’s “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All the Time”, . . . – and see if you don’t recognize the NYU Student Government response in the following:
Reading Marcuse in 1969 and 1970 as a graduate student in intellectual history, I was thoroughly appalled…I almost wondered why anyone would take him seriously…now more than 55 years later I find the influence of the Marcuse and the left of the Frankfurt School was far more harmful and pervasive than I could have imagined.
How do these cancel idiots think this is going to work IF they ever even get hired on their new job? Will the employer cancel the client they scream down or will the employer fire them?
These people have a rude awakening when they enter the real world.
But they will not enter the real world.
they will go on to get jobs in the unreal worlds of academia, media and the public sector.
How about we all cancel cancel culture?