Drew announced Marc Freedman, founder and co-CEO of the nonprofit organization CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org), as its speaker for its 158th commencement ceremony.
CoGenerate works to reduce what Freedman called in a 2024 Marketplace article a state of “age-apartheid,” which he described as the increasing divide between generations in America, occurring at the same time as record amounts of “age diversity.” CoGenerate aims to bring young and old generations together to solve these problems. The solutions proposed, however, fundamentally misassess the problems they are trying to solve.
In articles for the Wall Street Journal and Marketplace, Freedman is quoted targeting the current housing situation as a leading factor for age-based division. The Marketplace article goes on to mention how housing affordability is at its lowest level in 60 years, and how, to help solve both this and the age divide, there should be a shift towards multigenerational housing. This not only faces problems in terms of how many families could actually benefit, but it also fails to address root causes of the housing affordability crisis.
The root causes of the housing crisis lie in zoning rules that restrict the amount of affordable housing able to be built, and in problems associated with a corporatization of the housing industry, like artificially inflated costs of rent. This results in a housing market where 75% of homes are unaffordable for the median household, according to Bankrate. Trying to solve this problem by cramming more people into each household instead of making more than 25% of homes accessible to the average family fails to recognize the real issues.
Multigenerational housing also only works if one has a large enough family, an already strong relationship with their family and if the younger generations have the finances to support the older ones. Freedman has long championed an idea that would perhaps address that last point: what he calls “encore careers.”
This is when, at what we would consider the age of retirement (mid-60s), individuals “take an early year of social security and use that to go back to school to re-skill, then work another year afterwards (without social security),” as explained by an Esquire article which quotes Freedman. Again, this looks at a problem, this time financial struggles in retirement, but chooses the wrong solution.
Instead of trying to strengthen Social Security as it is running out of money, perhaps by increasing taxes on the upper class in a United States that is at one of its highest levels of wealth inequality (based on the World Bank’s tracking of the Gini index), instead this solution tries to reduce the amount of Social Security that is paid out.
One sector where Freedman has pushed for seniors to fill jobs is in childcare. In an article he co-wrote for Newsweek, he proposed employing senior citizens in pre-K programs, given the “rippling labor shortages.” The problem, however, is not just that there is a “labor shortage” in the early childhood education industry, there is a wage shortage.
As explained by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley last March, “inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages.” The national median hourly wage in the early childhood education industry is just $13.07 (lower than the minimum wage in New Jersey and many other states), and few employers provide substantial benefits. Yes, there is a massive problem with having enough educators for early childhood programs, but the solution isn’t to flood the labor market with seniors who would otherwise retire, but to fairly compensate the educators being pushed out of this vital position because wages are too low.
These policies reflect an attitude of pitting the responsibility of solving large societal problems on the individual, and especially those less fortunate individuals who are affected most by those very problems, instead of pushing for systematic solutions which can progress us all forward together.
Furthermore, Freedman has made clear his support for the incorporation of artificial intelligence into university classrooms. As one of the speakers of the “Wisdom Meets Innovation: How AI Will Transform Education and Connect Generations” panel hosted last spring by Drew University and the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation, Freedman advocates for a technology that is rupturing learning methods for students of all ages.
As we spoke about in a recent lead editorial, the Acorn does not think AI should have a place at Drew as a generator of student work and expression. To have Freedman as a commencement speaker would endorse this type of learning that could be detrimental to our university in the long run.
Historically, Drew University’s commencement speakers have come from positions of clear public leadership, elected officials, renowned authors and influential artists—figures whose work engages systemic change. Speakers like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Cory Booker reflect a tradition of inviting individuals who not only identify societal challenges but have the platform to reshape the institutions behind them.
Even speakers from entertainment, such as James Van Der Beek and Christopher Reeve, have been invited not simply for name recognition, but for their ability to connect personal experience to broader conversations about resilience, advocacy and social responsibility.
Marc Freedman, by contrast, represents a departure—not in credentials, but in approach. As founder of CoGenerate, his work focuses on bridging generational divides, yet his solutions consistently emphasize individual adaptation over structural reform. That shift signals not just a different background, but a different message—one that stands in tension with the more systemic, change-oriented tradition of Drew’s commencement stage.
At a moment meant to celebrate the achievements of an entire graduating class and send them forward with clarity and conviction, a commencement speaker should offer not just big ideas, but the right ones.
Commencement is not just a ceremony, it is a statement about who we are and what we stand for. Inviting a speaker whose solutions overlook systemic inequities risks endorsing a worldview that normalizes them.
Our graduating class deserves a voice that challenges injustice at its roots, not one that asks us to adapt to it.
The Lead Ed is the collective opinion of the Editorial Board
