Heterodox Academy
For decades, experimental cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker has been helping researchers subject to cancellation attempts from the left. Known chiefly for his pathbreaking work in human psychology, Pinker has earned a reputation as an unwavering advocate for freedom of inquiry. Now he finds himself speaking out about assaults coming from the right as the Trump administration battles with Harvard University, where Pinker is the Johnston Family Professor of Psychology. Join us as Steve Pinker shares his analyses of the problems and what he sees as the future of free inquiry, in conversation with historian of science and medicine Alice Dreger, HxA’s Managing Editor and Senior Scholar.
The one hour conversation will include time for audience Q&A. Register today and join in on the discussion https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xpoDPjeTSzSzpiI_C9bCYA#/registration
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Aw. They edited it a little bit, but in the final second of the live stream, that little kid behind Steven hit him upside the head with the stuffed animal or whatever it was!
People from outside of Harvard are just going to hear the "headlines" about what is going on there. We see the various protests. We see/hear former president Claudine Gay's performance in front of congress and subsequent irregularities with respect to plagiarism in her own dissertation which resulted in her stepping down but not losing her very lucrative teaching position or questions of her doctorate. Roland Fryer, a phenom of sorts getting his wings clipped for presenting his research that does not seem to agree with ideology. There is the whole DEI statements that you even speak of either lying or using AI to get through a hiring process (so staring off one's Harvard's association with dishonestly).
Harvard has problems. Yeah, if you have tenure, one is shielded but why does a professor need shielding for presenting what the find during their research? Diversity should be a diversity of ideas and perspective. Harvard continues to present itself as the poster child of what can go wrong with a DEI policy at the university level.
I do not agree with a political administration attacking or imposing their ideology upon an institution like Harvard but that does not change that the way it presents itself continues to be problematic. The whole DEI policies cast doubt on the quality of the Harvard degree, which is incredible given Harvard's historic standing.
With multiple bestselling books and having been a professor for decades I'm sure Steven pinker would do just fine without his Harvard salary and they could in fact use it to buy a centrifuge
Harvard has stripped cognitive autonomy and replaced it with institutionalized programming. Harvard wants ideological clones, not free thinking innovators.
~17:20
Students are no longer the "ultimate powerless people" on campus anymore, at least not at state universities. Since state funding tanked, most state universities increasingly rely on both corporate grants and higher tuition to cover costs. So administrations are very reluctant to "punish" students anymore, for anything really. They are too valuable as funding assets.
The real losers in modern academia are staff. Untenured, non-faculty, low-paid staff. Universities typically have zero difficulty or consequences for firing staff for almost any reason. They are the indentured servants of modern academia.
Mr. Steve Pinker, please share with us your experience with Your Close Friend Jeffery Epstein
I am thrilled that AI will be able to compile the statements of Steven Pinker that were made in real time over the course of this mania including warning about its inevitable backlash. History will be kind to both of you for your intellectual integrity. Also, mediocre picture and audio quality will be perfected. Magnificent.
As Pinker is left leaning, he is sympathetic to those DIE people in HR. You cannot route them out. It's a cancer and will destroy the patient. It's only a matter of time. Sad.
Pinker has been criticized for his association with recently infamous pimper of children and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, accepting transportation to TED Talks on Epstein's plane and appearing in a photograph with Epstein and Lawrence Krauss.
When Epstein was indicted for sex crimes in 2006, Pinker testified as a linguist for the defense. Pinker was asked by his friend Alan Dershowitz to opine "on the precise meaning of a federal law about using the internet to entice minors into prostitution or other illegal sex acts."
Talks about EO Willson as being attacked by his colleagues Gould and Lewontin… except they were right to call out Wilson for his covert racism.
It is a fact, and this came out recently, that EO Wilson had a correspondence with J Philippe Rushton (a white supremacist pseudo-scientist) spreading over the years. Rushton was famous for saying blacks had smaller brains but bigger dicks and other racist stuff like that. He was funded by the white supremacist Pioneer Fund. The correspondence is mentioned by Pinker in the interview. What is not mentioned however is how Wilson helped Rushton's career. It is damning evidence what is inside those letters and points out that Wilson indeed had racist views.
EO Wilson has done great work on Ant behavior. Just like William Shockley really deserved the Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor. But they were both racists and they should be called out for it. Their ideas on genetics should not be taken seriously as this will lead to atrocities, such as the previous century has shown us.
More on EO Wilson's racism see Farina and Gibbons.
Pinker is living in a bubble. Ask him how many faculty voted for Trump. If it is less than about 30%, that tells you all you need to know when almost 50% of the country voted for him. Ask him how many condemned former prez Gay when she made a fool of herself in Congress. Did he?
He is dead wrong, of course, about Trump. Trump sits down with anyone and everyone. That is not anti-semitic. Poor Pinker has lost the plot. He also has apparently not read the letter from the Admin – it wanted a negotiation based on shared values. The fools of Harvard are so arrogant they could not lower themselves to talk. F Harvard.
It's interesting how you seem to see the Trump admin as the Establishment. What do you make of the years of lawfare against Trump, Russiagate, impeachments, media hoaxes, and the undeniable TDS at all universities?
Thanks!
Stop running and start weight lifting Steve.
I agree in the main with Pinker's points, and I'm also concerned about an over- correction of Woke ideological capture. However, it is far from certain or clear that MAGA is or will be worse. Enlighten us, Steven, with evidence for that claim. What, for instance, could be worse than the Woke assault on the epistemic integrity of our truth-seeking and sense-making institutions, e.g., claims that biological sex is fungible; that there are no measurable differences between races and that all "identities" are socially-constructed; that standpoints and lived experiences trump empirical observations? What could be more deleterious than the renorming of cultural values that has led to the least bigoted people in history being ostracized, denied economic opportunity, and effectively disappeared from any representation in the arts and media, all for the putative sins of their fathers? Why is it that as a straight, white male and cultural liberal who taught as an adjunct professor for over 20 years, one complaint about the Wokeification of my college led to my unemployment and a refusal by colleagues and administration to recommend me for other teaching positions, which has left me economically stranded these last 3 years?
Free inquiry has always been a bit risky. I think of Galileo, who was actually friends with the pope who put him under house arrest. He wasn't supposed to be publishing what he saw. See but don't tell; sound familiar? The Scopes Trial is another example. The book the guy was teaching from had been approved by the same state that passed a law against teaching evolution. The book had evolution in it. Don't talk about that one chapter. In US education, as in many other countries, free inquiry has always been problematic, a battle ground between popular belief and tradition and scientific or philosophic inquiry. And, at one time, up until around 1872 or so, Harvard's main contribution to society was the preacher who inevitably or ineludibly preached against some kinds of inquiry.