Matt Lasner
Matt Lasner
Matt Lasner is a professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Hunter College. He received his PhD in Architecture, landscape Architecture and Urban Planning from the Harvard School of Design. Lasner is married to Daniel Goldstein.
Harassment of Ivanka Trump on JetBlue Flight
On December 22, 2016 Lasner was kicked off of a JetBlue flight (from New York to Florida) for harassing Ivanka Trump and her children. He tweeted multiple times regarding the incident that his husband was “chasing” down Trump and Kushner “to harass them,” hashtagging his tweet “#banalityofevil.” But Lasner’s story changed quickly, as he then tweeted “My husband expressed displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane.” He also tweeted a picture of Trump sitting on the plane. It appears the tweets have since been deleted. Lasner’s husband told Ivanka Trump, “Your father is ruining the country.”
Statement from JetBlue regarding the situation:
“The decision to remove a customer from a flight is not taken lightly.
If the crew determines that a customer is causing conflict on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane, especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of escalation during flight.
Our team worked to re-accommodate the party on the next available flight.”
Following the incident, Lasner's faculty bio was removed from the directory of Hunter College's website. It is presumed that he lost his job as professor at the college. [1]
Career
Before coming to Hunter College, Lasner was an associate history professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Some of Lasner's courses have included Introduction to Urban Planning, Introduction to Housing, Housing in the Global City, and Housing and the American City. Lasner has published quite a bit about housing and about urban and architectural history, such as in the book High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century, which won the 2013 Cummings Prize by the Vernacular Architecture Forum. He has also written for journals such as the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Journal of Urban History, Buildings & Landscapes, Planning Perspectives, and the Journal of Architectural Education.