Howard Gardner Imagines the Future of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner, who developed the theory of multiple intelligences, delivered the Inaugural Jacob K. Javits Lecture in late October at Rosenthal Pavilion in the Kimmel Center for University Life. Sponsored by the Javits Foundation, the lecture, “From Multiple Intelligences to Future Minds,” also included remarks by NYU President John Sexton and Marcelo Suàrez-Orozco, the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor for Globalization and Immigration Studies at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

As a developmental and cognitive psychologist with expertise in neuropsychology, Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences in the early 1980s. In more recent work, he has addressed issues of policy, transitioning his scholarship from “how things are” to “how things ought to be.” His lecture outlined the five kinds of minds—disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical—that need to be cultivated in the future.