Latest news with #StevenPinker
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Steven Pinker's Damning Defense of Harvard
Talk may be cheap, and actions may speak louder than words. Nevertheless, rhetoric matters. It arouses passions, noble and base. It frames issues, clarifies stakes, defines missions, and directs activity to its proper ends; it also obscures consequences, sows confusion, and leads astray. A statesmans rhetoric unites free and democratic citizens by connecting short-term exigencies to the nations enduring principles. A demagogues rhetoric undercuts a constitutional republics long-term interests by fomenting grievances and legitimating the thirst for retribution. In late May in "Harvard Derangement Syndrome," a 4000-word New York Times essay criticizing the universitys right-wing critics, Steven Pinker argues "that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged." The prolific Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author admirably acknowledges that Harvard is alarmingly flawed, but he insists that his university deserves to be preserved and improved rather than destroyed. Still, his defense of Harvard is damning. Pinker furnishes a sampling of the scorn that the right has been heaping on his university. Recently, mostly right-wing critics have denounced Harvard as "a 'national disgrace, a 'woke madrasa, a 'Maoist indoctrination camp, a 'ship of fools, a 'bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment, a 'cesspool of extremist riots" and an 'Islamist outpost in which the 'dominant view on campus is 'destroy the Jews, and youve destroyed the root of Western civilization." Not to be outdone, President Trump has opined that Harvard is, writes Pinker, "'an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, a 'Liberal mess and a 'threat to Democracy, which has been 'hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and "birdbrains" who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders." Harsh rhetoric, indeed. What is the reality? Rare among his colleagues, Pinker has an honorable decade-long record of criticizing and seeking to correct Harvard from within. He has called on the university to admit students based on merit, protect free speech, rein in DEI, and, a year after Hamas Oct. 7 massacres in southern Israel, "teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity." In 2023 - late in the day it must be noted - he co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. These are earnest and commendable efforts. But Pinker underestimates the cumulative damage Harvard has inflicted on itself over many years by sidelining merit, censoring speech, admitting students unprepared to grapple with moral and historical complexity, and hiring and retaining faculty and administrators indifferent or ill-disposed to academic freedom. To counter the right-wing critics who want to crush Harvard, Pinker invokes characteristically conservative concerns. He espouses incremental reform and appreciation of the services - such as scientific research - rendered by Harvard. He warns against the common tendency to view institutions, like people, as either all good or all bad rather than as a mix of strengths and weaknesses. He urges "proportionality" in dealing with Harvards "serious ailments." And he advises that "[t]he appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out." These are sound prescriptions. Still, Pinker might have come closer to grasping the roots of right-wing ire by recognizing that Harvard would have avoided transforming itself into a haven for illiberalism if university administrators and faculty had exercised the moderation that he calls upon the universitys right-wing critics to practice. Instead, Pinker maintains that a significant portion of right-wing ire is misplaced. Harvard has become a "tempting target" for the right, he thinks, because among its 25,000 students and 2,400 faculty "eccentrics and troublemakers" are inevitable "and today their antics can go viral." Well-meaning inquirers, moreover, will sometimes get carried away in debate over weighty and consequential issues. And "global networks" shape Harvard faculty and graduate students more than does Harvard while "peer cultures" influence students more than "indoctrination by professors." These routine considerations and commonplace effects would explain occasional lapses on Harvards part from its educational mission. They do not begin to capture the magnitude and perdurance of the pathologies that plague Harvard and higher education more generally. Since the 1951 publication of William F. Buckleys "God and Man at Yale," mostly conservatives have diagnosed those pathologies. Allan Blooms "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987), Roger Kimballs "Tenured Radicals" (1990), and Allan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglates "The Shadow University" (1998) remain timely. Pinker acknowledges that "some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned." Yet contrary to his assurances, his examples suggest that the problem stems not from "eccentrics and troublemakers" and occasional departures from decorum by otherwise upstanding members of the academic community, but rather from a dominant intellectual culture that subordinates free inquiry to the enforcement of progressive dogma: In 2021 the biologist Carole Hoovenwas demonized and ostracized, effectively driving her out of Harvard, for explaining in an interview how biology defines male and female. Her cancellation was the last straw that led us to create the academic freedom council, but it was neither the first nor the last. The epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeelewas forced to grovel in "restorative justice" sessions when someone discovered that he had co-signed an amicus brief in the 2015 Supreme Court case arguing against same-sex marriage. A class by the bioengineerKit Parkeron evaluating crime prevention programs was quashed after students found it disturbing." The legal scholarRonald Sullivan was dismissed as faculty dean of a residential house when his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein made students feel "unsafe." These gross violations of academic freedom, Pinker suggests, are the exception. But the counterexamples that he offers to demonstrate that the rule at Havard is to tolerate a diversity of opinions reinforce the conviction that the university has lost its way. Across more than two decades at Harvard, Pinker states, he has "taught many controversial ideas including the reality of sex differences, the heritability of intelligence and the evolutionary roots of violence." He fails to note that the typical objections on campus to these ideas are rooted not in empirical evidence but rather in moral and political outrage. His assertion that most of his colleagues also "follow the data and report what their findings indicate or show, however politically incorrect" also has the opposite effect of that which he intends. Thats because "politically incorrect" research findings at Harvard turn out to consist in confirming the fairly obvious and mostly mundane: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racismhas been in decline. Phonics is essential to reading instruction. Trigger warnings can do more harm than good. Africans were active in the slave trade. Educational attainment is partly in the genes. Cracking down on drugs has benefits, and legalizing them has harms. Markets can make people fairer and more generous. Pinker, though, contends that the conduct of such research shows that "[f]or all the headlines, day-to-day life at Harvard consists of publishing ideas without fear or favor." It doesnt. That an enlightened liberal of Pinkers stature believes that Harvard scholarship involving for the most part the confirmation of readily observable phenomena warrants praise for standing against the crowd dramatizes just how far gone is the universitys intellectual life. Determined to see Harvard as open and pluralistic, Pinker asserts that the faculty contains "dozens of prominent conservatives, like the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule and the economist Greg Mankiw." If, however, there were, say, five dozen conservative faculty members on campus, that would amount to less than 3% of the universitys 2,400 faculty members, and it would underscore that Harvard is a one-party operation. Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, suggests the situation is much worse than Pinker realizes. "I have been at the university for 21 years," he told me, "and have no idea who the dozens of prominent conservatives are." Goldsmiths HLS colleague, Professor Vermeule, one of Pinkers two examples of conservatives on campus, went further in a reply to Pinker on "X": "With all due respect, out of these two (2) examples of 'conservative faculty, one supported Harris in 2024. The other doesnt call himself a 'conservative, because he thinks there is little left to conserve." In an email exchange, Vermeule - the one who doesnt call himself a conservative - elaborated: "Now that Harvey Mansfield has retired, its extremely difficult to name any 'prominent conservatives at Harvard, let alone 'dozens. Although I suppose there may be a few natural scientists flying under the radar." Pinker briefly defends Harvards undergraduate curriculum. He reports that the universitys introduction to economics remains very popular and is routinely taught by conservatives or neoliberals, most courses are mainstream, and typical woke classes are small boutique offerings. He overlooks, however, the progressive orthodoxy that permeates the mainstream classes. And he disregards Harvards impoverishment of its undergraduate curriculum - similar to other elite universities - in areas that constitute liberal educations core: American political ideas and institutions; constitutional, diplomatic, economic, religious, and military history; the great books of Western civilization; and serious study - rooted in knowledge of language, culture, and history - of other peoples and nations. While Pinker is correct that the right would do well to rein in its invective, his Harvard-is-not-as-bad-as-it-seems rhetoric could use some fine tuning as well. His lengthy New York Times assessment corroborates the suspicion that for those concerned about the plight of liberal education, Harvard is at least as bad as it seems. Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism
The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking 'legitimation by association' by platforming more mainstream figures. The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called 'human biodiversity', which other academics have called a 'rebranding' of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism. Pinker's appearance marks another milestone in the efforts of many in Silicon Valley and rightwing media and at the fringes of science to rehabilitate previously discredited models of a biologically determined racial hierarchy. Related: Revealed: International 'race science' network secretly funded by US tech boss Patrik Hermansson, a researcher at UK anti-racism non-profit Hope Not Hate, said that Pinker's 'decision to appear on Aporia, a far-right platform for scientific racism, provides an invaluable service to an extremist outlet by legitimising its content and attracting new followers'. He added: 'By lending his Harvard credentials to Aporia, Pinker contributes to the normalisation and spread of dangerous, discredited ideas.' The Guardian emailed Pinker for comment using his Harvard email address but received no response. Nor did he reply when approached through his university press office or his publishers. In the hour-long recording published this week, Pinker engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about economic progress, artificial intelligence and social policy with host Noah Carl. During the podcast, Pinker expressed agreement with claims made by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a prominent figure in the 'human biodiversity' movement that seeks to promote race-based theories of intelligence, and like Pinker a one-time participant in a human biodiversity email list convened by Steve Sailer. When Carl cited 'evidence collected by sociologists like Charles Murray suggesting that part of the family breakdown in some communities in America seems to be attributable to the state taking over the traditional function of the father', Pinker responded: 'I think that is a problem.' He added: 'It is a huge class-differentiated phenomenon, as Murray and others write it out.' Reporting last October in the Guardian revealed that Aporia operates within a broader network of groups and individuals seeking to mainstream racial pseudoscience. The initiative had been secretly funded by US tech entrepreneur Andrew Conru until he was contacted for comment on the reporting, and Aporia's editors are connected to far-right extremists, including Erik Ahrens, whom German authorities have designated a 'rightwing extremist' posing an 'extremely high' danger. The investigation also found that Aporia was owned by the Human Diversity Foundation, a Wyoming LLC founded in 2022 by Emil Kirkegaard, a Danish self-described eugenicist and race scientist who has spent years attempting to access genetic datasets, and maintaining publishing platforms including OpenPsych and Mankind Quarterly that serve a network of race-science researchers. The same reporting revealed that in secretly recorded conversations, Aporia co-founder Matthew Frost expressed ambitions for it to 'become something bigger, become that policy, front-facing thinktank, and bleed into the traditional institutions'. He also said that the publication had recruited mainstream writers for the purposes of 'legitimacy via association'. Carl, listed as editor on Aporia's masthead, was dismissed from a Cambridge fellowship in 2019 after an investigation found that he had published articles in collaboration with far-right extremists. He spoke at least twice at the eugenicist London Conference on Intelligence and in a 2016 paper wrote that anti-immigrant stereotypes were 'reasonably accurate' in relation to their propensity for crime. The 2016 conference program, which Carl attended, featured a quote from early 20th-century psychologist Edward Thorndike stating: 'Selective breeding can alter man's capacity to learn, to keep sane, to cherish justice or to be happy.' Aporia's podcast has previously featured prominent white nationalists including Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish psychologist who was suspended and reinstated in 2006 as a professor at the University of Aarhus over his research linking gender and intelligence, and who in 2017 spoke to the white nationalist American Renaissance conference. In his Aporia appearance, Nyborg connected immigration and crime, claiming that 'the more genetically inhomogeneous a population is, the more critical it becomes in terms of social unrule, or what you'll call that social disturbance, criminality and so on'. Another former guest, Jared Taylor, is American Renaissance's founder. Pinker is world famous as the author of bestselling books including The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. His work has emphasized themes including universal human cognitive abilities and the decline of violence over time, and has previously advocated for 'colorblind equality'. His appearance on Aporia, however, follows a recent pattern of controversy around his connections to figures promoting eugenics and scientific racism, including Steve Sailer. Pinker included a Sailer essay in a collection of American science writing. According to science writer Angela Saini's Superior, a history of the revival of race science, Pinker was in turn an early participant in Sailer's Human Biodiversity email discussion group. His ties to Sailer drew criticism from other writers including Malcolm Gladwell. The Guardian has previously reported on the recent revival of Sailer, a 'white supremacist' and a 'proponent of scientific racism', by the far-right publisher Passage Press. A 2021 academic study led by UCLA academics identified Pinker as one of the 'political centrists' who have 'played a role in legitimizing the ideas of the human biodiversity movement' in a way that has benefited white nationalists, despite not being core proponents themselves. Hermannson, the Hope Not Hate researcher, said: 'Considering the coverage Aporia has received and its long list of racist contributors, it's hard for Pinker to argue he engaged with it unknowingly.'
The Guardian
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism
The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking 'legitimation by association' by platforming more mainstream figures. The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called 'human biodiversity', which other academics have called a 'rebranding' of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism. Pinker's appearance marks another milestone in the efforts of many in Silicon Valley and rightwing media and at the fringes of science to rehabilitate previously discredited models of a biologically determined racial hierarchy. Patrik Hermansson, a researcher at UK anti-racism non-profit Hope Not Hate, said that Pinker's 'decision to appear on Aporia, a far-right platform for scientific racism, provides an invaluable service to an extremist outlet by legitimising its content and attracting new followers'. He added: 'By lending his Harvard credentials to Aporia, Pinker contributes to the normalisation and spread of dangerous, discredited ideas.' The Guardian emailed Pinker for comment using his Harvard email address but received no response. Nor did he reply when approached through his university press office or his publishers. In the hour-long recording published this week, Pinker engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about economic progress, artificial intelligence and social policy with host Noah Carl. During the podcast, Pinker expressed agreement with claims made by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, a prominent figure in the 'human biodiversity' movement that seeks to promote race-based theories of intelligence, and like Pinker a one-time participant in a human biodiversity email list convened by Steve Sailer. When Carl cited 'evidence collected by sociologists like Charles Murray suggesting that part of the family breakdown in some communities in America seems to be attributable to the state taking over the traditional function of the father', Pinker responded: 'I think that is a problem.' He added: 'It is a huge class-differentiated phenomenon, as Murray and others write it out.' Reporting last October in the Guardian revealed that Aporia operates within a broader network of groups and individuals seeking to mainstream racial pseudoscience. The initiative had been secretly funded by US tech entrepreneur Andrew Conru until he was contacted for comment on the reporting, and Aporia's editors are connected to far-right extremists, including Erik Ahrens, whom German authorities have designated a 'rightwing extremist' posing an 'extremely high' danger. The investigation also found that Aporia was owned by the Human Diversity Foundation, a Wyoming LLC founded in 2022 by Emil Kirkegaard, a Danish self-described eugenicist and race scientist who has spent years attempting to access genetic datasets, and maintaining publishing platforms including OpenPsych and Mankind Quarterly that serve a network of race-science researchers. The same reporting revealed that in secretly recorded conversations, Aporia co-founder Matthew Frost expressed ambitions for it to 'become something bigger, become that policy, front-facing thinktank, and bleed into the traditional institutions'. He also said that the publication had recruited mainstream writers for the purposes of 'legitimacy via association'. Carl, listed as editor on Aporia's masthead, was dismissed from a Cambridge fellowship in 2019 after an investigation found that he had published articles in collaboration with far-right extremists. He spoke at least twice at the eugenicist London Conference on Intelligence and in a 2016 paper wrote that anti-immigrant stereotypes were 'reasonably accurate' in relation to their propensity for crime. The 2016 conference program, which Carl attended, featured a quote from early 20th-century psychologist Edward Thorndike stating: 'Selective breeding can alter man's capacity to learn, to keep sane, to cherish justice or to be happy.' Aporia's podcast has previously featured prominent white nationalists including Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish psychologist who was suspended and reinstated in 2006 as a professor at the University of Aarhus over his research linking gender and intelligence, and who in 2017 spoke to the white nationalist American Renaissance conference. In his Aporia appearance, Nyborg connected immigration and crime, claiming that 'the more genetically inhomogeneous a population is, the more critical it becomes in terms of social unrule, or what you'll call that social disturbance, criminality and so on'. Another former guest, Jared Taylor, is American Renaissance's founder. Pinker is world famous as the author of bestselling books including The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. His work has emphasized themes including universal human cognitive abilities and the decline of violence over time, and has previously advocated for 'colorblind equality'. His appearance on Aporia, however, follows a recent pattern of controversy around his connections to figures promoting eugenics and scientific racism, including Steve Sailer. Pinker included a Sailer essay in a collection of American science writing. According to science writer Angela Saini's Superior, a history of the revival of race science, Pinker was in turn an early participant in Sailer's Human Biodiversity email discussion group. His ties to Sailer drew criticism from other writers including Malcolm Gladwell. The Guardian has previously reported on the recent revival of Sailer, a 'white supremacist' and a 'proponent of scientific racism', by the far-right publisher Passage Press. A 2021 academic study led by UCLA academics identified Pinker as one of the 'political centrists' who have 'played a role in legitimizing the ideas of the human biodiversity movement' in a way that has benefited white nationalists, despite not being core proponents themselves. Hermannson, the Hope Not Hate researcher, said: 'Considering the coverage Aporia has received and its long list of racist contributors, it's hard for Pinker to argue he engaged with it unknowingly.'
New York Times
31-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
Harvard as Symbol and Target
To the Editor: Re 'Is America Really Better Off if Harvard Gets Crushed?,' by Steven Pinker (Opinion guest essay, May 25): Dr. Pinker need not apologize for Harvard's imperfections and its shortcomings, or praise the best of what it has to offer. There has not been a studied analysis of this school by the Trump administration. Its attack on the university is simply a con. President Trump has announced his list of enemies. Elite universities are prominent among them, and Harvard is the perfect target for him, the head of the snake. Mr. Trump loves to hate. And when he hates, it is with the most intense fury. To him, Harvard is not a college, but a symbol, a vehicle, a place where he can make a point, in his own fashion, loudly and wildly. There are no shades of color in his universe — only black or white, for or against. There can be no appeasing Mr. Trump. For victims of his animus, the goal line will forever be moving. Antisemitism was the first excuse for his attacks, then D.E.I., then curriculum. Now it's foreign students. Tomorrow it will be something else, anything else. Harvard no longer exists to educate. It has disappeared under an avalanche of Mr. Trump's malice. Robert S. NussbaumFort Lee, N.J. To the Editor: As a trustee at another university in the Boston area, I have lived through similar experiences and agree with most of what Steven Pinker suggests. At a recent commencement dinner, I had the opportunity to sit with our provost, who expressed her view that she sincerely hopes that universities will do some in-depth soul-searching when the uproar we are experiencing now settles down. I believe we are doing just that. Thank you, Dr. Pinker, for pointing out that faculty members who use students to protest and express support for their personal views are being inappropriate and unprofessional. Those of us who protested in the 1960s were mostly students. Faculty generally did not protest with us. Instead, in the context of small group discussions, they led students toward deep discussions, encouraging us to defend our views, learn the law and express ourselves peacefully. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Post
28-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump's team needs to spell out what ‘winning' over Harvard means, or they risk defeat
We're happy to cheer Team Trump as it confronts Harvard University and the rest of US academia — but we're not sure what the end game is here, nor if the president's men and women even have one in mind. Few Americans will sympathize with the 'suffering' of a privileged institution with an endowment over $50 billion, not to mention the institutionalized antisemitism, the hostility to free speech and the record of nakedly racist admissions and hiring policies. Nor, as iconoclast Steven Pinker put it (in a column defending the school) its demands that job applicants submit 'diversity statements' that test 'their willingness to write woke-o-babble.' Advertisement And we can certainly understand a focus on Harvard first to encourage its peers to get moving before the spotlight hits them, as witness MIT's move to drop DEI. Without a doubt, Harvard has to do far more than have its president tell NPR that he knows it needs to do better. But even Harvard alum and harsh critic Bill Ackman, in a long post on these issues, allows that Team Trump's maximalist April 11 list of demands was a mistake, even as he points to the April 3 requests as a fine template for reform. Advertisement It's insanely confusing for most observers, what with all the grant cancellations, moves to cancel the school's tax-exempt status, revoking of visas for its foreign students and on and on. And if it keeps up, it'll start to look purely punitive — which risks a slapdown not just by liberal district-court judges, but by Supreme Court justices who'll expect the feds to hold all universities to some consistent set of standards. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Harvard & Co. dealt themselves losing hands by becoming so dependent on federal largesse, but the country's far better off if these once-great institutions can be salvaged. Advertisement On an informal level, they can and should show seriousness by replacing multiple board members with clearly committed reformers. Meanwhile, Trump and his minions need to lay out hard, realistic specifics for what winning this battle will look like — or they risk making it unwinnable.
