Boston University’s retiring president has sent a parting shot at his final class of graduating students, calling out the alums for “cancel culture” after one of the most awkward commencements of all time when they booed and shouted obscenities at the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO amid the writers’ strike.
BU President Robert Brown on Wednesday gave his perspective about the heated commencement ceremony from May 21, when Writers Guild of America striking union members picketed outside Nickerson Field and grads at the ceremony booed CEO David Zaslav.
The graduating students chanted “Pay your writers!” at Zaslav throughout his commencement speech.
Brown is now slamming the students “who were appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive to Mr. Zaslav.”
“Our students were not picking a fight,” Brown wrote in a post on BU’s website on Wednesday. “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses.
“The hundreds of virtually identical protest emails we received in my office in advance of Commencement came with an explicit ‘cancel’ hashtag, indicating an aim to prevent Mr. Zaslav from speaking,” Brown added. “The attempt to silence a speaker with obscene shouts is a resort to gain power, not reason, and antithetical to the mission and purposes of a university.”
BU has been in hot water since the announcement of Zaslav as commencement speaker amid the Hollywood writers’ strike.
Zaslav, a BU Law alum from 1985, was invited long before the strike started on May 2, according to Brown.
“For a university committed to free speech, protests are appropriate and common,” the president wrote. “The right to protest and freely express strongly held convictions is essential to sustaining the liberal democracy that we enjoy.”
“But what we witnessed on Nickerson Field during Commencement veered, regrettably, in a different direction,” Brown later added. “A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav… I can’t imagine how Mr. Zaslav felt hearing these obscenities directed at him. I have apologized to Mr. Zaslav for the behavior of these students.”
Zaslav is among eight Hollywood CEOs pictured on a viral list who collectively made more than $773 million in 2021, according to the writers’ guild. Zaslav took home $246 million that year, the guild posted online.
Brown, who was officiating his 18th and final commencement ceremony, has reportedly earned more than $2 million annually in recent years.
“On reflection, it seems to me that the incivility on Nickerson Field is indicative of the divisions in our country,” Brown wrote. “People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media.
“In our specific case the shouters infringed on the rights of others—to be heard or, more simply, to celebrate a milestone for a new graduate in a ceremony not disfigured with obscenities,” he added. “We must do better and be a place where freedom of speech and the vital instrument of lawful protest can coexist and foster every individual’s sense of belonging.”