On Tuesday, February 19, Dr. Jonathan Haidt presented the Thalheimer Lecture to Choate before being interviewed by Vincenzo DiNatale ’19 and Bekah Agwunobi ’19. Photos courtesy of Ross Mortensen
On Tuesday, February 19, students gathered in the PMAC and Getz Auditorium for the biannual Thalheimer Lecture. This year, Dr. Jonathan Haidt was invited to speak, and he shared with the Choate community a talk on moral psychology and its applications. Following his speech, Vincenzo DiNatale ’19 and Bekah Agwunobi ’19 asked some follow-up questions, before members of the audience were invited to participate in a Q&A.
Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His main area of study is moral psychology, and he has written three books on the subject — The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006), The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) and The Coddling of the American Mind (2018).
Mr. Joel Backon, Coordinator of the Thalheimer Program, mentioned that he reached out to Dr. Haidt’s bureau a year ago to schedule the visit. “It was fortuitous that we did that because when the book was published, he went on a book tour, but he already had this date committed to us. I think if we had waited until the book was published, we wouldn’t have gotten him,” he said.
Mr. Backon was also glad that Dr. Haidt was available throughout the day, not just during the evening program. “I like this model for a special program, because when we have a speaker come only in the evening, the only time that students can really interact with that speaker is in the Q&A after the program, and a lot of students aren’t able to ask their questions because there just isn’t enough time,” he said.
The committee invited Dr. Haidt because they thought that his field of research is relevant to teens today. Mr. Backon explained, “Every time we do a special program, we try to think of ways to find speakers who have things to say that students are going to be interested in. Few years ago, we brought Bob Woodward, who is very famous for breaking the Watergate scandal; I was very excited about it. Some of my colleagues were, and some students were, but other students weren’t that interested.”
He added, “He’s talking about issues that touch most students here on a regular basis. He’s talking about the conversations that we have, people’s political views, and their connection to the moral and ethical upbringing that we had. He’s talking about intersectionality — about safe spaces and trigger warnings; these are all things that are parts of conversations that students have on a fairly regular basis. But he’s talking about them in a way that we probably don’t think about very often.”
According to Mr. Backon, he has never had any influence on the topic of lecture and is willing to accept controversial thoughts. “I don’t tell speakers what they should be talking about and what they should not be talking about because I feel like that flies in the face of why you bring speakers to campus in the first place. Why would you go through the trouble of having Dr. Haidt here if we didn’t want him to talk about things that he knows a lot about? Does that mean that sometimes we have speakers who are controversial? Yes, but that’s going to be exactly his message; just because a speaker is controversial or just because a speaker expresses a point of view that you don’t happen to agree with, it doesn’t mean that that individual necessarily has to become the enemy,” he explained, which related directly to the purpose of Dr. Haidt’s speech.
Dr. Haidt focused on three main ideas from moral psychology: righteous minds cannot solve wicked problems, robust minds are damaged by overprotection, and identity politics heightens conflict within communities. He dove into the danger of motivated reasoning, the importance of being exposed to stress, adversity, and negative emotions, and the urgency of intersectionality. Referring to daunting statistics, he emphasized the shocking effect that social media has had on Gen-Z, particularly girls, and lamented how moral dimensions characterize the heterosexual white male as evil. To conclude his speech, he highlighted the importance of being in an ideologically and emotionally unsafe space so that differences can be embraced and common humanity identity politics can be encouraged. “You are the fire; now go find some wind,” he urged.
