The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie
The Harvard psychologist discusses recent gains for free speech at Harvard, growing political and ideological threats to academic freedom, and the importance of shared knowledge in sustaining truth and progress.
0:00— Introduction
1:27— The state of Harvard
4:42— Harvard is circumventing SCOTUS affirmative action ruling
6:02— How to foster true ideological diversity
7:25— Why does Harvard rank so highly?
10:16— Threats to academic freedom under Trump
18:58— Do universities really need federal funding?
23:14— History of government interference in higher education
27:20— Is the Trump administration uniquely anti-intellectual?
30:47— Is academia historically unpopular now?
36:55— How universities can regain trust
40:25— Richard Dawkins’ influence on Pinker
49:51— Societal progress was propelled by secularism
52:50— Why are public intellectuals pushing for religious revival?
54:23— Pinker’s new book: “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows”
https://reason.com/podcast/2025/05/07/steven-pinker-can-harvard-be-saved/
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Today’s guest is Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker and Reason’s Nick Gillespie discuss recent shifts at Harvard toward greater institutional neutrality and free speech, while warning that threats to academic freedom now come from both internal ideologies and external political forces—including pressure from the federal government under President Donald Trump.
Pinker defends the role of federal science funding but cautions against political micromanagement of academia, emphasizing the need for independent scholarly governance. The conversation also touches on Pinker’s admiration for Richard Dawkins, the impact of declining religiosity on moral progress, and the concept of “common knowledge” as explored in Pinker’s forthcoming book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.
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Video Editor: Ian Keyser
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Thanks all for turning out in such numbers for the first release on the new YT channel for the Reason Interview. We'll be releasing extra episodes for the first couple of week and all I can say is: If you like the Pinker conversation, tomorrow's release is going to knock your socks off. It's with outspoken billionaire Cliff Asness talking about Donald Trump, trade, and much more. And next week, we'll release my interview with Richard Dawkins.–Nick Gillespie
This didn’t sound like a hard hitting interview but more like two guys that agree on everything. Disappointing.
What is this obsession of Pinker and his internalised male guilt, the female is not the impersonal/ indefinite gender in the English language
Interesting conversation. Thank you!
Pinker is the worst guy to get to talk about this.
Couldn’t listen to this. Please stop interrupting your guest.
Sure as soon as you admit real students and get rid of remedial classes.
Amazing, his hope after psychical death to become just dust.
Life is short,eternity forever.
Glad to hear Steven say that there is a lot of actual education taking place at Harvard, but it doesn’t change the fact that the many mis-educated, anti-western, anti-free speech, liberals are being churned out of our colleges in large numbers. These activist college students/grads are a significant threat to the future of our country.
hahahahaha …. now all these moron professors who complained about “lack of academic freedom and antisemism at Harvard and other elite schools'' say … hey, no, we were kidding, please do not destroy Harvard … hey, we didn't mean it … TOO LATE! NOW YOU ARE GETTING WHAT WE WERE ASKING FOR!!
If truth is baked into the mission of universities, how come the Critical Theory and its outgrowth, Critical Race Theory, are under attack? It's as true as a social theory can be. Who decides it isn't? Why isn't Pinker pointing this out? Wokeness must be maintained because it's the truth. It's subject to refinements and improvements, of course, but the underlying framework provided by the Critical Theory is very valuable and true and eye-opening for the masses and the youth, which is why it's bothering those in power. Speak truth to power!
This guy has had too many covid injections.
Just like the SCOTUS ruling removing tax exempt status against Bob Jones U., Harvard should have its status removed and generally be defunded from tax payer largess. It is patently clear that the intellectual arrogance of Harvard/Pinker will not be easily subjugated; they will also continue to avoid enforcement of the recent SCOTUS ruling on the DEI initiatives embedded in their admission policies. They should emulate the federal fund free Hillsdale College if they would rather choose that model and free up some or all of their 50+ billion endowment to continue their policies. The taxpayer should not be dragged into financially supporting this form of education which the majority of the electorate oppose.
Will be interesting if Harvard has to close its door like one of those liberal colleges in Newton suburb areas of Boston.
Jesus wept, you are talking to Pinker, let him finish ffs. I had to stop watching because of your arrogant interruptions. Also blocked this channel from my YT feed.
This dude interrupts quite a bit. This professor is quite a good one.
Ohhh, slash Harvard's funding. They got a shitload of cash.
Gilllespie…very annoying interrupting and over talking his guest
Why should it be ? Harvard is a Communist hotbed.
How about not hiring so many America hating communist loving professors
Harvard takes taxpayer money and have serve taxpayers, who are represented by the federal government.
End your legacy admissions. STFU. 😂
Define saved. Harvard is not going away. Just get alternative funding. Easy stuff.
found the interview both interesting and entertaining. I'm not sure what the issue was regarding the interruptions, as Dr. Pinker seemed quite pleased throughout. From my perspective, the problem appears to lie more with the students than with those directly involved in the program.
I'm looking forward to seeing more content from the channel.
Best regards to Mr. Gillespie.
How can Pinker say that the administration is not trying to combat antisemitism when the Jewish students were harassed the way they were, at least seen on the news. We’re all the clips lies like the boarder crossings?
How often can an interviewer but in and inject their own irrelevant jokes and comments into an interview with a person that people want to listen to?
Pinker is the turd that helped Epstein with his defense with ridiculous semantic quibbling.
Stop bringing in Biden on everything! Sleepy Joe Biden you say? Compared to Convicted Felon Donald Trump, Biden certainly had more marbles in the head than Trump!
Harvard is 389 years old so far. Control freak Trump is hardly gonna take Harvard down. Trump has no right to try to control Harvard.
I wish people who like to use the terms Left Wing and Right Wing would define what they mean. The concept of wings came from the French Parliament. The Right Wing were the nobility, what I call inherited wealth. The Left Wing were the bourgeoisie, I call the newly rich. Both wings represent the rich and powerful. That means over 99.9% of the population are disenfranchised. That means practically nobody is Right Wing or Left Wing. And, one could say the same thing about Harvard.
Harvard still is at the bottom ( 251 out of 251 colleges) of free speech on campus. So I don’t think they will be able to be saved.
White Lotus season 3 was great actually
Not one word about the pro-Hamas/Jihadist protests on campus and the massive violations of the Title VI civil rights of Jewish Students at Harvard.
That is the reason Harvard was defunded by 3 Billion dollars and may soon lose its tax status and more.
These men are willfully blind and hiding behind elite machinations of some fantasy that Harvard is a victim of anti-intellectualism or conservatives. They are laughable and a good example of ideocracy.
In other words, I just wasted 59 minutes and 25 seconds of my life listening to two men babbling about everything but the actual Issue – Why Harvard is being defunded and may be stripped of its accreditation.
He doesn’t want “ micromanaging “ of federal tax revenue pumped into that school? The endowments should be taxed, and they should not accept our tax revenue to fund their student “ activism “
Wake up everybody: Dumbald is going for a full military coup in the very near future, maybe as soon as on his military parade! He will order the tanks and other military material to stay in Washington! He is testing how or how not officials of any kind react to the illegal operations of ICE and there are no firm reactions, because on the day of his military coup he will make ICE arrest all his strongest opponents, political ones, Judiciary ones and others. He has been doing nothing but testing all the time where he will find the most resistance, and the conclusion is he is still not stopped so he is ready to go full Force with the military on very short term!! He will do it, if you don't believe it, Tell me what he hasn't done yet so far? He's Broken every law, pisses on the constitution, intimidated judges, why would you think he would stop there? He will arrest his strongest opponents without due proces. Very soon now. So you all better start rehearsing right now how you Will stop ICE by force, instead of waiting until they really do so. Organise and train your troops now immediately. In Trump's logic, no reason to stop here because nobody's stopping him anyway.
This is question is malformed. SHOULD Harvard be saved?
No.
Too much of individualistic "white man values" is so counter-productive to the idea of human flourishing.
I gotta say, Stevens hair is fabulous.
informative
Pinker thinks that Dowrkin and Brownmiller are valid sources. He is a charlatan.
Excellent interview. Yes, the interviewer interrupts too much and says “right, right, right” etc. too frequently. But what Pinker does say salvages the conversation.
Its kind of dumb to call pinker to discuss why harvard shouldn't be defunded when the fact that he studied there is a perfect example of why it SHOULD be defunded. (Really, if you think that Dworkin and Brownmiller are scientific sources and humanists, you are not well educated no matter how many letters you have after your name.)
32:48 C'mon don't be racist against children.
Some children are better leaders than many adults.
If you start at 3, you can be a pretty good leader, when you reach the age of 10.
Not all children sit back and let their mind rot in school.
Some kids go out and start their own firms.
Don't lock them up in school.
Take children serious.
I love Pinker, his books are literally the reason I am a psychology professional today helping people around the world.
But I suspect his wife or someone has TDS and this is why he still cannot accept Trump is the logical result of decades of WOKE.
People in comments saying Nick keeps interrupting are so used to 'podcasters' sycophantically interviewing people way out of their league they don't know what it looks like when two men who respect each other have a fucking conversation.
This is a masculine conversation; you're all jaded by feminine media.
His dimissal of the need of shelters for abused men in the better angels of out naturel was one of the most vile things I read.
Far fewer interruptions of male interviewes on the part of Gillespie.