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New York University\u2019s<\/a> Jonathan Haidt checks a number of\u00a0boxes for an\u00a0in-house commencement speaker: best-selling author, public intellectual, and high-profile campus figure. A social psychologist teaching \u201cethical leadership\u201d at NYU\u2019s school of business, his books like The Coddling of the American Mind and The Anxious Generation show up on airport bookshelves and the Obama end-of-year-list. He has been a fixture on the liberal-nerd podcast circuit and in the TED Talk world, best known for advocating for free speech and limited screen time. Despite that r\u00e9sum\u00e9 \u2014 or because of it \u2014 some NYU students donning violet gowns today at Yankee Stadium would prefer it wasn\u2019t Haidt delivering their final undergrad address.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like Jonathan Haidt is meant to scold the student body and belittle them,\u201d says Mehr Kotval, a graduating senior with a degree in comparative global politics. In an op-ed<\/a> for the student paper, she wrote that the choice of a professor who wrote about coddled young people was a \u201clast parting gift of disrespect\u201d for students.<\/p>\n The backlash began last week, when the student government assembly delivered a letter to the university expressing its \u201cprofound disappointment\u201d in the choice of Haidt. The letter<\/a> cited his argument<\/a> in 2024 that the university system needs to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; it also cited his decision in 2022 to resign<\/a> from a top professional society for psychology rather than submit a statement on anti-racism.<\/p>\n For years, Haidt has described himself<\/a> as a \u201cprofessor who favors free speech,\u201d pushing back<\/a> against the concepts of microaggressions and safe spaces that he saw as limiting the potential for growth and debate on campus. An avowed centrist, he also has argued the case for embracing conservative views in education, going so far as to claim<\/a> that conservatives on campus were made to feel like gay people trapped in the closet. In 2015, he co-founded the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting ideological diversity at the university level. He was devoted to this idea for years, even joining the board of Bari Weiss\u2019s University of Austin, which was founded to promote ideological diversity and fight \u201cwokeism.\u201d (He severed ties with the unaccredited school last year.)<\/p>\n \u201cHaidt still fashions himself as somebody who supports this diversity of thought on college campuses,\u201d says a graduating politics major, \u201cbut he doesn\u2019t represent that heterodoxy anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n In the spring of 2024, students called for the university to divest from Israel<\/a> as IDF soldiers killed thousands of civilians in Gaza<\/a> following the October 7 attack by Hamas. But as students set up encampments to protest the war and their university\u2019s investments, Haidt said<\/a> the movement that spring was not \u201cgrounded in reality.\u201d The graduating politics major notes that Haidt\u2019s office is adjacent to Gould Plaza, where 120 people<\/a> were arrested that April when the New York Police Department raided the encampments. But Haidt appears to have made no public statements about\u00a0 NYPD officers in riot gear putting students in zip ties<\/a>. \u201cI think it was a pretty conscious choice on his part not to speak up in the defense of students who were being arrested for their perspectives,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Haidt has waded into the most contentious debate on college campuses in the past two-plus years. He expressed support<\/a> for Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7, though he has acknowledged<\/a> that while \u201cI\u2019m on one side,\u201d there \u201care good reasons for taking the other side.\u201d In addressing antisemitism on campus, he wrote that \u201canti-Israel sentiment seems to be increasingly closely linked to hatred of Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n Students\u2019 frustration with picking Haidt extends beyond the protests. This semester, administrators debuted NYU IRL, an initiative inspired<\/a> by Haidt\u2019s anti-phone crusade to get students to be present with each other in person; it included the renovation of a lounge with phone lockers and board games and colored pencils. (In a further twist, the New York Post ridiculed<\/a> the lounge as a playroom for students spending $91,000 per year. The professor who denounced the coddling of young people accidentally inspired a \u201cday care,\u201d as the tabloid put it.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels absurdly hypocritical for NYU to celebrate Jonathan Haidt\u2019s ideas about rebuilding an in-person community when the university has spent the last two years shutting down spaces for students to gather, protest, or speak freely,\u201d says Kotval. She added that she was not allowed to walk in a smaller graduation on Wednesday for NYU\u2019s Gallatin School of Individualized Study because she was wearing a keffiyeh.<\/p>\n Haidt did not respond to a request for comment; an NYU spokesperson said he was focused on his speech. \u201cProfessor Haidt is one of the most consequential scholars of the 21st century,\u201d they added. \u201cWe\u2019re excited he\u2019ll be on our stage to share something truly meaningful with this year\u2019s graduates.\u201d<\/p>\n Some students are looking forward to Haidt\u2019s message, including graduating seniors like psychology major Hannah Swartz, who was a member of Haidt\u2019s Human Connection Club. \u201cIt\u2019s a club that\u2019s centered around having novel experiences without your devices to help build community and connection on campus,\u201d says Swartz. This semester, those activities included game night and line dancing. \u201cWe also went to a crafts place,\u201d she says. Grant Callahan, a Human Connection Club member graduating from the real-estate program, said that Haidt\u2019s message to disconnect from the phone and reconnect with each other is \u201cthis inspiring thing where it\u2019s not a lost cause. Like there is a solution to this.\u201d As for the dissenters, he says, \u201cThe only folks I\u2019ve encountered who are actively opposed to him for our graduation speakers are folks who have not fully been openly engaged with his work.\u201d<\/p>\n Criticism of graduation speakers is a time-honored tradition. This year, the 2026 class of the University of Central Florida booed<\/a> their speaker, a real-estate executive who told them that \u201cthe rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.\u201d And NYU had another speaker drama last year: After a Gallatin student condemned the \u201cgenocide currently occurring in Gaza\u201d in his address last May, the university banned<\/a> live school-specific speeches.<\/p>\n Not all Haidt dissenters are put off by his views. I spoke to a marketing major frustrated by the professor\u2019s lack of celebrity status\u00a0compared to past NYU commencement speakers like Molly Shannon (2025), Pharrell Williams (2017), and Taylor Swift (2022). \u201cYou pay all this money, you spend all this time and energy looking forward to that big day of having a fun commencement speaker,\u201d said the marketing major, who was jealous of Northeastern\u2019s pick: Hilary Duff. He said of Haidt, \u201cAll my friends and I had to like physically Google who the commencement speaker was because we didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Intelligencer\u00a0Newsletter<\/p>\n Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n