{"id":801668,"date":"2026-05-16T23:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801668\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T23:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T23:50:20","slug":"greene-nyu-graduation-speaker-strikes-out-at-yankee-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801668\/","title":{"rendered":"Greene: NYU graduation speaker strikes out at Yankee Stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Add Jonathan Haidt to the list of heavy hitters who have been booed at Yankee Stadium.<\/a><\/p>\n

Haidt isn\u2019t a hated outfielder for the rival Boston Red Sox. Neither is he a former fan favorite who switched allegiances and signed with the crosstown Mets, like Juan Soto did.<\/p>\n

Haidt is a noted NYU professor who spoke at Thursday\u2019s graduation ceremony against the wishes of many of the school\u2019s students,<\/a> who likened his appearance to being kicked in the rear on the way out the door.<\/p>\n

The invite to Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University\u2019s Stern School of Business, sent tassels turning among students who said the professor did not represent the graduates\u2019 values.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the young critics have taken issue with what they describe as Haidt\u2019s campaign against progressive university culture. They point to his efforts to dismantle DEI and his tech-free initiatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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,\u201d the Student Government Assembly\u2019s executive committee said in a statement before the ceremony.<\/a><\/p>\n

Haidt co-founded a college to counter \u201cilliberalism\u201d and \u201cwokeism\u201d in higher education in 2021 \u2014 before quietly cutting his ties to the institution in 2025.<\/p>\n

The professor was criticized in 2022 when he refused to write a required statement on equity and inclusion for a social psychology event, at which he was scheduled to speak, and resigned from the organization in protest.<\/p>\n

Haidt, meanwhile has taken the backlash in stride<\/p>\n

\u201cGraduates have heard from prime ministers, presidents, Supreme Court justices, movie stars and \u2014 of course \u2014 Taylor Swift,\u201d Haidt said at the graduation. \u201cSo, I know what you\u2019re all thinking: \u2018Thank God they finally found a social psychologist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to the insult was a ban on live student speeches at the graduation. In response to complaints last year about a student speaker who criticized Israel, the university required that some student graduation speeches be recorded ahead of time, a requirement that didn\u2019t apply to speakers like Haidt.<\/p>\n

Free speech did manage to slip through the graduation cracks. A student at the stadium briefly disrupted the ceremony when he began waving an Israeli flag in the stands, before other graduates told him to stop.<\/p>\n

That display came days after a flag with two swastikas<\/a> flanking a Star of David and the letters \u201cNYU\u201d was flown from a university building. The banner was quickly removed, and police said the incident is being investigated, possibly as a hate crime.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: Years ago, I was a purple-robed graduate soaking in the words of our graduation speaker, House Speaker Thomas P. \u201cTip\u201d O\u2019Neill. I don\u2019t remember what he said after all these years, but I remember being inspired.<\/p>\n

NYU was where my journalism career started, writing for the Washington Square News, and editing Brownstone, the university\u2019s only Black magazine. It was also where I made lifelong friendships and connections with some of the best in the business: Nick Charles, Ann Brown, Scott Wenger, Joel Sherman, Marisa Osorio, Jeff Rubin, Sebastian D\u2019Elia and the late Steve Gilliard.<\/p>\n

We weren\u2019t at Yankee Stadium, or Radio City Music Hall. We did it the old-fashioned way, right in the Village at Washington Square Park, decades before anyone thought about enacting a curfew.<\/p>\n

Now, they\u2019re talking about putting up gates.<\/a><\/p>\n

We had our college campus issues and student protests, too. For us, it was apartheid in South Africa and demands for universities to divest from companies that did business there.<\/p>\n

The Class of 2026 learned another valuable lesson, one that our class learned a long time ago: that it\u2019s right to question and challenge authority \u2014 but don\u2019t expect to win all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Add Jonathan Haidt to the list of heavy hitters who have been booed at Yankee Stadium. Haidt isn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":801669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-801668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116586940256811943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}