Jonathan Haidt is a professor of ethical leadership based at New York University’s Stern School of Business. As a social psychologist, his research examines the foundations of morality, and he is also interested in ways to transcend the “culture wars” by using recent discoveries in moral psychology to foster more civil forms of politics. He is the author of a book on positive psychology, The Happiness Hypothesis, as well as two New York Times bestsellers: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Coddling of the American Mind, written with Greg Lukianoff.

When Haidt sees major systems and institutions malfunctioning, he gets people together and founds organizations to address the problems. To address recurring problems in business ethics, he created EthicalSystems.org, which helps businesses apply behavioral science to improve their ethical cultures. To improve the dynamism and culture of open inquiry in universities, he cofounded HeterodoxAcademy.org. To teach people skills to engage in discussion across political and social divisions, he cofounded OpenMindPlatform.org. And, to address the mental health problems of Gen Z, as documented in The Coddling of the American Mind, he cofounded LetGrow.org, which encourages parents and schools to give kids more freedom to learn and grow from experiencing independence.