Professor uninvited to UCF in 2017
Hart made comments about police brutality, former students say
A Columbia University neuroscientist’s invitation to speak at UCF was rescinded in 2017 after he made controversial comments about the police, a stark contrast to the university’s refusal to fire a current professor accused of racist social media posts, say former students.
Carl Hart, a professor at Columbia, was scheduled to talk about his book, “High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society,” as part of the University of Central Florida’s common reading program for incoming freshmen in fall 2017.
But Hart’s UCF speaking engagement was canceled abruptly by the administration and students said they were told it was because of controversial comments he had made at institution and in a
op-ed, where he wrote he would rather his children “interact with drugs than with the police.”
Preventing a Black academic from speaking on campus was an “egregious overstep,” a group of UCF graduates wrote in an open letter to the community, especially in light of the university’s treatment of Charles Negy, a faculty member who has authored Twitter posts that many students and others say are racist.
University President Alexander Cartwright has condemned Negy’s tweets, but said the university can’t take action against him because his speech is protected by the First Amendment. The university is conducting an investigation of another