The outgoing president of Boston University has denounced some of the students who protested their commencement speaker, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, at the ceremony last week, saying they were pushing "cancel culture."
Zaslav, a BU alum, spoke to the graduates Sunday, May 21, as the writer's guild strike began. There were protests both inside and outside Nickerson Field, including shouts of "pay your writers" during Zaslav's commencement address, which was booked long beforehand.
BU President Robert Brown endorsed the right to protest but took issue at the obscenities hurled at Zaslav, which he said would have started a fight when he was a kid in San Antonio, Texas, and which prompted him to apologize to the media executive.
"Our students were not picking a fight. They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that has become all too prevalent on university campuses," Brown wrote in an essay posted to the BU website Wednesday.
"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," he added.
Brown noted that most of the people at the graduation didn't protest — those who did booed, turned their backs and held up signs. Outside of the stadium, scores of protesters picketed by an inflatable rat, all part of an action planned in advance by the Writers Guild of America.
Brown said that the "appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive" treatment of Zaslav ignored the responsibility to respect others' free speech and was rude to the guests in attendance.
The guild's strike, which has lasted nearly a month, has paralyzed Hollywood, preventing new content from being produced. The roughly 11,500 striking members of the union are seeking higher minimum pay, more writers per show and shorter exclusive contracts, among other demands amid the boom in content that's come with the streaming era.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has said that it had offered "generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals," including the highest first-year wage increase in a WGA contract in more than 25 years, and the creation of a new category of rates that would mean a new, higher minimum for mid-level writers.
In a statement after the event, Zaslav said, “I am grateful to my alma mater, Boston University, for inviting me to be part of today’s commencement and for giving me an honorary degree, and, as I have often said, I am immensely supportive of writers and hope the strike is resolved soon and in a way that they feel recognizes their value.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
