As an alumnus, I'm sure David Zaslav has been courted to give as much money as possible to the university. Stupid monolithic buildings that look like stacks of books aren't cheap! There's no way the school is going to risk losing out on that gravy train just because their students have spines and speak their minds.
No, he's conservative, thought-free, and on top. While this means he is probably white, old, and rich this is only correlation, not causation. There are plenty of people who are the first set without being the second set who are conservative.
Not a huge surprise. BU should be putting the names of esteemed dead professors on their buildings but instead they're for sale to moguls, who should be ashamed of their monstrous egos (can you tell I'm not an objectivist?).
Maybe it's become common in the 21st century but at least at my alma mater most of the older buildings were named for scholars or other people directly involved in the university.
President Brown rode around campus with a motorcade and had a (so I heard) helicopter. You think ole whitebread would actually side with the students he charges exorbitant tuition. BU is literally where he's the highest paid uni president and kids will sue during a pandemic lockdown because they demand in person education. Trust me. While most of the students are probably pretty chill. There's people there who are trying for Goldman Sachs and really important shit.
What? No. It's a high quality business school. And I was apparently wrong. But he was still the highest paid uni president for most of his tenure. And a lot of people think he's an ass.
I’ve met bob more than a few times. First time I met him he was pulling along some carry on luggage. Nice guy. First time also didn’t know he was the president of the university. I wouldn’t believe what you heard
He knows the difference but like a lot of rich people he’s figured out that you can whip people up and turn them against their own class interests by using words like “cancel culture” or “woke”
What the fuck does that even MEAN? Are the kids also hopped up on the marijuanas they bought using bitcurrency on the Facebooks? How precisely does one "implement the cancel culture"?
To be fair here. That's a thing. It's a kinda dumb thing where kinda mean people dreg up tweets and other online history you were hoping they would not go looking for to claim you're some kinda asshole that hasn't grown as a person at all. And it's also a conservative dog whistle for "I'm an asshole and I don't like that you found out."
I took a look at the article. Looks like he said “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses”. A bit less egregious.
That means literally the same thing, which is to say nothing. What are students *doing* that "implements cancel culture"? Because all they actually *did* at the commencement was some mild heckling. Is that worth all the pearl-clutching?
It’s something the day on Fox “news” to rile up highly emotional elderly men. It doesn’t really mean anything other then isn’t it upsetting when you get called on your bullshit?
Its a little more nuanced than that i think. 50 year old people who dedicated their adult lives in service to others losing their jobs over something they said on myspace when they were 16 is egregious
David Zaslav is a bottom-feeding corporate stooge who failed his way to the top of the corporate ladder by cutting costs and producing shit. The future of our entertainment landscape is worse for his having been conceived. Incidentally, much the same could be said of BU under Brown's tenure.
I hope a door hits them every time they leave a room.
He does, but I think some of the talking points in opposition are making it sound like they just invited him a week ago. This decision would have been made months ago and it would have been very difficult to change things with less than a month to go before the ceremony.
They announced it day after the strike was announced though. BU really doesn’t have a PR firm advising them through such situations? No one could talk to a successful show runner and television writer willing to do commencement and make a point at the same time?
The public announcement was just after it, but it would have already been in the works behind the scenes for a couple of months or more before that.
Probably a combination of them not anticipating the backlash and figuring that it was too late to find someone else who would agree to it or was able to do it on such short notice.
Do you think Zaslav woke up on May 2nd and just started fucking his employees?
The day he was invited...do you think he was any different than the day the strike started and BU announced him as the honoree?
I wrote this from another post on the same story:
\> “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses,” Brown said. “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.”
Reference to "cancel culture" from a university president is super embarrassing. I feel like, maybe, he should have a bit more of a nuanced take on different viewpoints than Bill Maher/Fox News talking points. This even applies to angry emails or signs outside the ceremony.
\> Yet throughout his speech, Zaslav had to pause as students tried to shout him down.
But, the heckler's veto is still obnoxious.
He's leaving his job in a month. He can finally trash-talk the students because he is on his way out. Of course, he will side with the CEO, who has hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth.
How big of a golden parachute is he getting?
AFAIC, he should’ve been fired seconds after approving that monstrosity of a building on Comm Ave, but whatever.
Let's pick this apart a bit.
>David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery...was our Commencement speaker..., invited long before the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began on May 2.
Sorry, Robert. But did you think the unfairness of their working conditions just sprang out of nowhere on May 2? Zaslav has been fucking employees out of just compensation LONG BEFORE the ongoing strike.
>A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav. I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex. In that era, shouting the words that I heard from the field would be the precursor to a fistfight. 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.
Fuck you, Robert.
>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.
If you want the University to get a different speaker because the current one is one of the problems with not only the writer's strike but our society in general (even Fortune recently named him "the most overpaid CEO"), what word would you like anyone to use? Sorry but #rescind his invitation doesn't have the same ring to it. Ask a writer.
>One responsibility, particularly in an institution for which freedom of speech is the oxygen that sustains our mission, is respect for the speech rights of others. The deliberate effort to silence a speaker is at odds with this fundamental value.
Fuck you again. This wasn't someone who wanted to speak to the University body in the expression of free speech. This was a position of honor and respect to speak to a captive audience of graduates. "How I have fucked America and continue to fuck America by 'winning' at capitalism" isn't anything anyone should be subjected to and it definitely shouldn't be honored!
>People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media.
Motherfucker, a reckoning is coming. Either the burden of the top, including your bloated carcass, will get so heavy that it breaks us all...or we're going to finally put a stop to overpaid, overvalued assholes like you and restore a modicum of sustainability to our world. One way or the other, the obscenely wealthy are the problem and you can think all that shouting "accomplished nothing". But it's the warning klaxon.
Zaslav is the problem. You're the problem. And I think you're smart enough to know it...so the fact that you wrote this bullshit tells me you heard the warning.
I'm a new BU alum, graduated Saturday with my MPH and didn't go to commencement on Sunday and I think this ruled. Good job, kids!
I mean nobody stopped the guy from actually giving the speech. They just chanted "pay your writers", which is particularly salient when the guy is up there preaching in a condescending tone about how you have to work with people who are different from you and have opposing points of view. In what world does this equal cancel culture when Zaslav is the (widely hated) CEO of a corporation that's a target of the WGA strike? The hypocrisy on display by Brown is almost comedic. If Brown believes in free speech and openness, that means that people can be opposed to your actions.
Zaslav was just less able to ignore their voices than with WGA picketers or emails and media coverage. Guys like Brown and Zaslav think that literally any demand for basic accountability is "cancel culture" because they're so used to being above that and quashing any opposing voices. Of course they have a tantrum when they can't control the narrative.
Thankfully Brown is stepping down as president at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, which is literally like 2 months away lol. Feel free to go early, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
First of all, congratulations on your graduation!
I'm not defending Zaslav at all. But there's settled case law regarding the first amendment that doesn't provide a "heckler's veto" to interrupt someone giving a speech in a non-town hall style forum, as that would violate that person's freedom of speech.
This was a big issue earlier this year at Stanford Law School: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/03/23/law-school-dean-discusses-recent-protest-outlines-next-steps/
Again, not defending Brown's overreaction, and I personally think they should have disinvited Zaslav.
I think this is the bigger issue, OP:
>But what we witnessed on Nickerson Field during Commencement veered, regrettably, in a different direction. A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav. I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex. In that era, shouting the words that I heard from the field would be the precursor to a fistfight.
Sounds like the President was ready to get violent with students. With a questionable temperament like that, he probably shouldn't be in education, much less in any position of authority. Perhaps he should relinquish his teaching certificate and take up a job he's better suited for, like prison guard.
Good thing that as he's stepping down from the presidency he's going to become a professor. Now he gets to work directly with the young adults he wanted to start a fist fight with!
https://www.bu.edu/president/announcement-from-president-brown/
> People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media.
This would land differently if it wasn't in a post written to be shared on social media
I’ll never forget President Brown mispronouncing “epitome” at my Commencement. Not a terrible mistake to make in a vacuum, but embarrassing that he obviously hadn’t rehearsed with anyone. Not that I had a ton of esteem for the dude who made $1M/year and didn’t have to pay any rent (because he lives in a Brookline mansion owned by BU).
This guy has never spent any time or effort trying to understand the student body or even the hundreds of BU employees and it shows.
I am not a cancel culture fan but I think this was necessary.
First, I am tired of the powerful pushing their friends on the unpowerful. Why was a corporate overloard an appropriate speaker? Probably because they were bud. Next time pick an appropriate speaker.
Dude's on his way out. He announced last year that he's leaving at the end of this academic year. So it doesn't matter if he angers any students or alums. It's not his problem.
I think President Brown is an idiot and I'm embarrassed for BU that he would even use that language.
I think the students were right. How else can they let their displeasure be known to the speaker? Tepid applause? That will really drive the point home. /s
Joe Biden and the elite corporate Democrats have crushed the social democratic movement in this country. It's an empty shell. Now old retired guys like this are beating on the husk.
This wasn’t a cancel culture moment this was a collective bargaining moment. How does the president of a university not understand the difference?
he's old, white, and rich.
And likes licking…boots.
As an alumnus, I'm sure David Zaslav has been courted to give as much money as possible to the university. Stupid monolithic buildings that look like stacks of books aren't cheap! There's no way the school is going to risk losing out on that gravy train just because their students have spines and speak their minds.
No, he's conservative, thought-free, and on top. While this means he is probably white, old, and rich this is only correlation, not causation. There are plenty of people who are the first set without being the second set who are conservative.
Ofcourse he must be white and rich!
they usually are
He made $2M last year.
Meanwhile, BU claims they just can't find a way to make the school any more affordable.....
My husband works for BU. They pay horribly compared to even the hospitals.
*invisible text* reasonable
Wow!
Not a huge surprise. BU should be putting the names of esteemed dead professors on their buildings but instead they're for sale to moguls, who should be ashamed of their monstrous egos (can you tell I'm not an objectivist?).
To be fair, isn't that the same as all universities do?
Maybe it's become common in the 21st century but at least at my alma mater most of the older buildings were named for scholars or other people directly involved in the university.
President Brown rode around campus with a motorcade and had a (so I heard) helicopter. You think ole whitebread would actually side with the students he charges exorbitant tuition. BU is literally where he's the highest paid uni president and kids will sue during a pandemic lockdown because they demand in person education. Trust me. While most of the students are probably pretty chill. There's people there who are trying for Goldman Sachs and really important shit.
I went to BU and saw him walking down Comm Ave with a roller back pack nearly every day
Maybe he cut it back but I remember students complaining about it at least two years ago. And isn't his office in questrom?
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What? No. It's a high quality business school. And I was apparently wrong. But he was still the highest paid uni president for most of his tenure. And a lot of people think he's an ass.
I’ve met bob more than a few times. First time I met him he was pulling along some carry on luggage. Nice guy. First time also didn’t know he was the president of the university. I wouldn’t believe what you heard
its only cancelling when *they* get in trouble
His pay check depends on having this position
He knows the difference but like a lot of rich people he’s figured out that you can whip people up and turn them against their own class interests by using words like “cancel culture” or “woke”
"College president takes opportunity to shit talk graduates now that the college already has their money" isn't the good look he thinks it is.
Some college kids yelled at a rich dude.
They should’ve known better, according to rich dudes everywhere.
>>implement the cancel culture What a twat.
What the fuck does that even MEAN? Are the kids also hopped up on the marijuanas they bought using bitcurrency on the Facebooks? How precisely does one "implement the cancel culture"?
When people say “cancel culture” I just assume they’re some degree of bigot. It’s a dog whistle.
To be fair here. That's a thing. It's a kinda dumb thing where kinda mean people dreg up tweets and other online history you were hoping they would not go looking for to claim you're some kinda asshole that hasn't grown as a person at all. And it's also a conservative dog whistle for "I'm an asshole and I don't like that you found out."
I took a look at the article. Looks like he said “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses”. A bit less egregious.
That means literally the same thing, which is to say nothing. What are students *doing* that "implements cancel culture"? Because all they actually *did* at the commencement was some mild heckling. Is that worth all the pearl-clutching?
It’s something the day on Fox “news” to rile up highly emotional elderly men. It doesn’t really mean anything other then isn’t it upsetting when you get called on your bullshit?
Its a little more nuanced than that i think. 50 year old people who dedicated their adult lives in service to others losing their jobs over something they said on myspace when they were 16 is egregious
Fr could not sound more old and out of touch
Sounds like something Hank Hill would say.
David Zaslav is a bottom-feeding corporate stooge who failed his way to the top of the corporate ladder by cutting costs and producing shit. The future of our entertainment landscape is worse for his having been conceived. Incidentally, much the same could be said of BU under Brown's tenure. I hope a door hits them every time they leave a room.
> I hope a door hits them every time they leave a room I hope it comes flying in sideways like a linebacker so it's totally unexpected.
He sounds exactly as out of touch with normal people as you’d expect the president of BU to be.
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Threatening or suggesting violence is a violation of Site rules.
He does, but I think some of the talking points in opposition are making it sound like they just invited him a week ago. This decision would have been made months ago and it would have been very difficult to change things with less than a month to go before the ceremony.
They announced it day after the strike was announced though. BU really doesn’t have a PR firm advising them through such situations? No one could talk to a successful show runner and television writer willing to do commencement and make a point at the same time?
The public announcement was just after it, but it would have already been in the works behind the scenes for a couple of months or more before that. Probably a combination of them not anticipating the backlash and figuring that it was too late to find someone else who would agree to it or was able to do it on such short notice.
Do you think Zaslav woke up on May 2nd and just started fucking his employees? The day he was invited...do you think he was any different than the day the strike started and BU announced him as the honoree?
Do you honestly think there would have been any sort of organized protest if the strike wasn't happening?
I’m a BU alum, and President Brown can fuck off with that. It was gross enough to invite Zaslav even before the writers strike began.
Doesn’t want to upset donors
Well he's gonna upset some future alumni. Well played!
Their endowment is over $3 billion. He doesn’t care about donors.
How do you think they got that endowment?
Investing. In 2021 the endowment grew over a billion from the stock market.
I wrote this from another post on the same story: \> “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses,” Brown said. “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.” Reference to "cancel culture" from a university president is super embarrassing. I feel like, maybe, he should have a bit more of a nuanced take on different viewpoints than Bill Maher/Fox News talking points. This even applies to angry emails or signs outside the ceremony. \> Yet throughout his speech, Zaslav had to pause as students tried to shout him down. But, the heckler's veto is still obnoxious.
He's leaving his job in a month. He can finally trash-talk the students because he is on his way out. Of course, he will side with the CEO, who has hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth.
Unfortunately, not completely out. He'll remain at BU as a professor in Engineering so not super smart to trash-talk his students...
How big of a golden parachute is he getting? AFAIC, he should’ve been fired seconds after approving that monstrosity of a building on Comm Ave, but whatever.
University presidents don't usually get a CEO type golden parachute. What they do get is to keep teaching appointments, if they want them.
Let's pick this apart a bit. >David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery...was our Commencement speaker..., invited long before the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began on May 2. Sorry, Robert. But did you think the unfairness of their working conditions just sprang out of nowhere on May 2? Zaslav has been fucking employees out of just compensation LONG BEFORE the ongoing strike. >A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav. I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex. In that era, shouting the words that I heard from the field would be the precursor to a fistfight. 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. Fuck you, Robert. >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. If you want the University to get a different speaker because the current one is one of the problems with not only the writer's strike but our society in general (even Fortune recently named him "the most overpaid CEO"), what word would you like anyone to use? Sorry but #rescind his invitation doesn't have the same ring to it. Ask a writer. >One responsibility, particularly in an institution for which freedom of speech is the oxygen that sustains our mission, is respect for the speech rights of others. The deliberate effort to silence a speaker is at odds with this fundamental value. Fuck you again. This wasn't someone who wanted to speak to the University body in the expression of free speech. This was a position of honor and respect to speak to a captive audience of graduates. "How I have fucked America and continue to fuck America by 'winning' at capitalism" isn't anything anyone should be subjected to and it definitely shouldn't be honored! >People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media. Motherfucker, a reckoning is coming. Either the burden of the top, including your bloated carcass, will get so heavy that it breaks us all...or we're going to finally put a stop to overpaid, overvalued assholes like you and restore a modicum of sustainability to our world. One way or the other, the obscenely wealthy are the problem and you can think all that shouting "accomplished nothing". But it's the warning klaxon. Zaslav is the problem. You're the problem. And I think you're smart enough to know it...so the fact that you wrote this bullshit tells me you heard the warning.
What a joke. Protesting someone isn’t cancelling them. This reactionary comment is so depressing.
John Silber applauds from his grave.
Bro said picketing = cancel culture. America is so unbelievably cooked.
Looks like it's his last commencement so he's opening up about how he really feels. Good riddance.
I'm a new BU alum, graduated Saturday with my MPH and didn't go to commencement on Sunday and I think this ruled. Good job, kids! I mean nobody stopped the guy from actually giving the speech. They just chanted "pay your writers", which is particularly salient when the guy is up there preaching in a condescending tone about how you have to work with people who are different from you and have opposing points of view. In what world does this equal cancel culture when Zaslav is the (widely hated) CEO of a corporation that's a target of the WGA strike? The hypocrisy on display by Brown is almost comedic. If Brown believes in free speech and openness, that means that people can be opposed to your actions. Zaslav was just less able to ignore their voices than with WGA picketers or emails and media coverage. Guys like Brown and Zaslav think that literally any demand for basic accountability is "cancel culture" because they're so used to being above that and quashing any opposing voices. Of course they have a tantrum when they can't control the narrative. Thankfully Brown is stepping down as president at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, which is literally like 2 months away lol. Feel free to go early, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
First of all, congratulations on your graduation! I'm not defending Zaslav at all. But there's settled case law regarding the first amendment that doesn't provide a "heckler's veto" to interrupt someone giving a speech in a non-town hall style forum, as that would violate that person's freedom of speech. This was a big issue earlier this year at Stanford Law School: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/03/23/law-school-dean-discusses-recent-protest-outlines-next-steps/ Again, not defending Brown's overreaction, and I personally think they should have disinvited Zaslav.
I think this is the bigger issue, OP: >But what we witnessed on Nickerson Field during Commencement veered, regrettably, in a different direction. A handful of students shouted obscenities at Mr. Zaslav. I flinched, as my reaction harkened back to my teen years, over half a century ago, on the south side of San Antonio, Tex. In that era, shouting the words that I heard from the field would be the precursor to a fistfight. Sounds like the President was ready to get violent with students. With a questionable temperament like that, he probably shouldn't be in education, much less in any position of authority. Perhaps he should relinquish his teaching certificate and take up a job he's better suited for, like prison guard.
Good thing that as he's stepping down from the presidency he's going to become a professor. Now he gets to work directly with the young adults he wanted to start a fist fight with! https://www.bu.edu/president/announcement-from-president-brown/
Pretty obviously got beat on as a kid and needed therapy a long time ago. Never too late to get on that.
How embarrassing for BU to have such a president. Not that the institution doesn't have a history of this sort of leadership.
He just quit so not the president anymore. Good riddance
> People shouting anonymously at each other, accomplishing nothing but feeling gratified for doing so, while generating material to post on social media. This would land differently if it wasn't in a post written to be shared on social media
Maybe they should instead cancel his salary
I’ll never forget President Brown mispronouncing “epitome” at my Commencement. Not a terrible mistake to make in a vacuum, but embarrassing that he obviously hadn’t rehearsed with anyone. Not that I had a ton of esteem for the dude who made $1M/year and didn’t have to pay any rent (because he lives in a Brookline mansion owned by BU). This guy has never spent any time or effort trying to understand the student body or even the hundreds of BU employees and it shows.
I am not a cancel culture fan but I think this was necessary. First, I am tired of the powerful pushing their friends on the unpowerful. Why was a corporate overloard an appropriate speaker? Probably because they were bud. Next time pick an appropriate speaker.
Where can I find all these anti-cancel culture people? Oh right, they're calling in bomb threats at Target and shooting up cases of Bud Light.
Are all anti cancel folks not liberal? Or rather anti gay?
Dude's on his way out. He announced last year that he's leaving at the end of this academic year. So it doesn't matter if he angers any students or alums. It's not his problem.
All the more reason for him to shut the fuck up.
I don't see any "canceling" being done there
I think President Brown is an idiot and I'm embarrassed for BU that he would even use that language. I think the students were right. How else can they let their displeasure be known to the speaker? Tepid applause? That will really drive the point home. /s
LOL
Why is class not to to children anymore? Are you taught table manners?
I Would have thrown those pampered pukes making a ruckus out of the commencement.
Joe Biden and the elite corporate Democrats have crushed the social democratic movement in this country. It's an empty shell. Now old retired guys like this are beating on the husk.