Citing “a fiduciary duty to the truth,” an NYU professor of ethical leadership and a social psychologist has stepped down from his primary professional association after being required to submit a personal statement on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
“NYU professor Jonathan Haidt is quitting,” Breitbart News posted on Twitter, adding Haidt’s statement included “as scholars I believe we have a fiduciary duty to the truth.”
With that, Haidt ended his association with the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). In a blog post to heterodoxacademy.org, Haidt said he made the decision to step down after recalling a speech he gave in 2016 at Duke University where he argued he has always believed a university “telos” or end goal is truth.
“I argued that the sudden wave of protests and changes that were sweeping through universities were attempts to elevate the value of social justice to become a second telos, which would require a massive restructuring of universities and their norms in ways that damaged their ability to find truth,” he said. According to Haidt, his prediction has come true as universities throughout the U.S. are attempting to fire professors for previous statements. He mentions his "fiduciary duty" as a professor to be loyal to the university.
Haidt said he was in the process of planning to attend a SPSP conference in Atlanta when he learned of the new rule.
“Most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity,” he wrote to SPSP. “I refuse to do this. I cannot remain loyal to an organization that is changing its telos and asking its members to violate their quasi-fiduciary duties to the truth. I am especially dubious of the wisdom of making an academic organization more overtly political in its mission, especially in the midst of a raging culture war, when trust in universities is plummeting.”
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Haidt taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years before joining the New York University Stern School of Business in 2011 teaching in ethical leadership.
According to the NYU website, his classes included exploring foundations of morality, “and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of progressive, conservatives and libertarians.” NYU said his mission is to apply his research to “help important institutions work better.”
On its website, SPSP stresses the group “strives to advance the science, teaching and application of social and personality psychology.”
The SPSP Equity and Anti-Racism (EAR) task force was entrusted with creating DEI standards for members to adhere to based on anti-racism, defined as “the policy or practice of opposing racism and promoting racial tolerance.”
The task force offered strategies such as: (1) “identify and address institutional and structural racism within SPSP, (2) ensure SPSP provides equity across all facets of the organization; (3) ensure SPSP leadership is as diverse as the membership of SPSP; (4) advance the field of social and personality psychology by providing meaningful mechanisms to our members to eliminate institutional racism in society.”