NYU Students Demand Cancel Culture Critic be Disinvited as Grad Speaker

NYU Students Demand Cancel Culture Critic be Disinvited as Grad Speaker

This is beyond parody. You couldn’t make it up.

The College Fix reports:

Students demand cancel culture critic Jonathan Haidt be canceled as NYU grad speaker

Student government leaders at New York University are demanding that administrators disinvite the 2026 commencement speaker, famed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, arguing the cancel culture critic is too divisive and controversial to platform.

Haidt, a business professor at NYU, is an outspoken critic of radical leftism in higher education.

He is a widely respected expert on social media’s effects on adolescent mental health and the author of two best-selling books on fragility among today’s young people, “The Coddling of the American Mind” and “The Anxious Generation.”

But NYU’s Executive Committee of the Student Government Assembly called on campus leaders in a recent memo to disinvite Haidt, saying his selection has created feelings of “disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment” among the student body.

The letter cites his criticisms of diversity, equity and inclusion, and also alleges he made “homophobic remarks” regarding transgenderism in a 2014 lecture.

“In a world marked by sustained attacks on higher education and the global unraveling of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has only deepened inequities, Professor Haidt is not the appropriate individual to address the Class of 2026,” the letter states.

The student leaders cited examples of previous commencement speakers Taylor Swift, David Boies, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor as those who upheld NYU’s inclusive values.

New York Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Matthew Haag described the irony of the backlash at NYU in a May 13 article, arguing it could have been an example in one of his books.

“A small group of students tries to cancel an outspoken critic of cancel culture, who says that American education has been woefully deficient when it comes to exposing young people to perspectives different from their own,” they wrote.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.