NYU Student Leaders Urge Reversal of Jonathan Haidt Graduation Invite Over 2014 'Coddled' Remarks
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 13
NYU Student Leaders Urge Reversal of Jonathan Haidt Graduation Invite Over 2014 'Coddled' Remarks
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 13
Student government leaders at New York University asked administrators to reconsider Jonathan Haidt as Thursday’s graduation speaker at Yankee Stadium, calling his selection “deeply unsettling.”
Their objection centers on Haidt’s long-running argument that students have been shielded from upsetting ideas, including remarks describing his generation as “coddled” and a 2014 class lecture students found offensive.
NYU said it still plans to proceed with Haidt, with spokesman Wiley Norvell calling him “one of the most consequential scholars of the 21st century.”
The dispute puts Haidt — a social psychologist and prominent critic of cancel culture and campus speech restrictions — at the center of the kind of free-speech fight he has spent more than a decade analyzing.
Are students protesting a 'cancel culture' critic inadvertently proving his most famous theories about them?
When free speech clashes with student values, which ideal should a university ultimately prioritize?