ReasonTV
Psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker is one of the leading defenders of academic freedom and liberal values of limited government, secularism, tolerance, and free enterprise.
0:00- How to save Harvard
12:42- The institution of neutrality
14:10- Universities should be nonviolent
20:31- How important is viewpoint diversity?
27:22- How bad is DEI?
32:02- How university policies are made
47:07- Why do progressives hate progress
52:00- The value of perspective
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/03/27/steven-pinker-what-went-wrong-at-harvard/
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A year ago, he helped found the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, “a faculty organization to advocate for the free and civil exchange of ideas inside and outside the classroom.” In the wake of the reaction by the campus left to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, he published “A Five-Point Plan To Save Harvard from Itself” in The Boston Globe. His ultra-influential home institution, he wrote, “is now the place where using the wrong pronoun is a hanging offense but calling for another Holocaust depends on context.” Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Pinker discuss if higher education is doomed, why so many people on the right and left are skeptical about moral and material progress, and how his ‘stereoscopic’ photography fits into his larger worldview.
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Jordan Peterson in a wig.
Unreasonable pro un alive ing kidz apologists & deniers. We all know about that hypocritical, wife x10 times more guilty of plagiarism Billionaire Bigot behind it all!
Pinker is so right about everything that I just get bored 😂
As an admirer of Prof. Steven Pinker, I must say I'm disappointed. He comes with such a beautiful academic solution to the sickness of Harvard, all full of empathy, logic, liberalism of the most beautiful form, and he just lulling himself to sleep as the fire already gets hold of his trousers.
Mr. Pinker, your home is on fire. The academy, your academy, is dead. You have 2 consecutive generations of useless empty-minded zombies, in all the important points and jobs. They will not go away. Harvard is dying as does the great tradition of reason.
You, Dr. Pinker aren't a young person, and who is going to replace you when time comes? just look around you.
Too many smiles here. You're living on a cloud.
What management wants is no problems. A solution that makes a problem go away (or at least go to someone else) is good. Right and wrong are irrelevant.
"but calling for another Holocaust depends on context." I assume he means the genocide in Gaza?
Has anyone called for any other Holocaust recently? Who is he talking about? (seriously, please tell me) and "pronouns are a hanging offense"? I don't know what level of hyperbole he thinks that is, but he's clearly being dishonest about this stuff. He's gone through so many criticisms of his book about progress, so he knows people just don't agree with him that there IS that much progress, yet he chooses to continue to mischaracterize their criticism as "hating progress". That is Trump-level absurd. If they hate progress it means they want to go back.
I can't believe this man would through away his reputation as a serious scholar to ay this absurd stuff that usually comes out of the mouth of obviously dishonest people like Bannon and Dave Rubin or Steven Crowder! He's really becoming one of them. How anyone can think truth is this man's main goal anymore is beyond me. He no longer uses the methods of reason as the primary means. He uses polemical, emotional, rhetorical persuasion to reach his ends. He'll probably be in Trump's cabinet if he wins.
It really makes me think there's more behind his his friendship and plane trips with Epstein that someone is using to leverage him.
So refreshing to hear from, as always with Professor Pinker.
Ouch. “So you’re against football schools…” Nick, American football was invented by Ivy League colleges to respond to the “sad lack” of Indian Wars, and their character-building effect on Yale and Harvard men who fought in these wars.
This is why, from earliest days, teams were named for “Indians.” Fans at the Polo Grounds rooted for the Carlisle Indians, not Harvard—because Harvard was known to cheat.
As one of your questioners pointed out, this character-building effect makes for better students.
I love the depth he goes into the origins of current social intuitions, e.g., societal wealth as a result of social interaction. On a completely different subject: perspective. Forestry students are taught to use a stereoscope, similar to the 19th century contraptions, to look at overlapping aerial photographs. This gives an experience of seeing exaggerated tree heights, mountains and valleys pop out and you know students have learned the procedure when they exclaim “wow!” But, you can also train your eyes to go parallel yet focus close up and you can see stereo from the overlapping photos without need of a stereoscope — called “naked eye stereo”. This is useful in other situations — too trivial to enumerate — but I wonder if there is a more useful application to put this skill to.
The reason why there is protests in America ,is because America is the main cause of the brutal Zionist government occupation of Palestine , many ,many protesters are jews who don't agree with the Zionist government ,but AIPAC is engaging , lawyers ,thinkers like this gentleman , politicians ,to allow natanyaho to continue his genocide in peace allong with the USA because without the US weapons this genocide will stop in a week,and the Zionist government will accept the two states solution , AIPAC is the true winner of America.
I am most repulsed by the fact that, while less prestigious schools have been forced to kowtow to their "customers" to stay alive, Harvard has the dough to resist these capitalist pressures on higher ed yet it CHOSE to become Woke Central. This is, as Hamlet would say, the imposthume of much wealth and peace. They allowed a culture of self-righteous postmodern anti-realism in their humanities department which cloaked the actual fascism and authoritarian structure of the way both younger faculty and students are cut out of any participation in governance (not to mention masking their own historic involvement in slavery and capitalist whitewashing of robber-baron money). This wokeness lets them continue to pump out our financial rulers, who go off to head hedgefunds while preaching hyperliberalism. Let them stew in their own juices.
on the "Attacks byHamas on Isreal" – are they both watching video news backwards and seeing hundreds of bombs flying from Hamsas into Isreal constantly for the last 9 months?
It’s so simple…look at what works to improve!
Can dude stop interrupting?
George orwell came to a similar conclusionas Dos Passos about the two sides in the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia. Even so, IMHO It would have been better overall had Franco's forces lost.
A lot of South and Middle American countries, such as Uruguay, HAD social safety nets. They were destroyed when the US (a rich country, in large part because of exploiting resources in poor countries) either invaded the country, or changed the regimes with military or economic forces to install an elite who facilitated US corporations exploiting their resources. In Bolivia, a US company privatized water so that locals had to pay when once they got it free. I admire and value Pinker in general but I was unaware how conservative he was. The view taht a country can do without environmental protection until it is rich shows a great misunderstanding of ecology and the environment. Disappointing.
The core issues with DEI are: 1) They are accountable to nobody. 2) They do not have measurable goals. 3) By definition, they are racist. 3) They infer a problem exists without proof and then assert they have a solution. 4) DEI destroys healthy organizations by eliminating meritocracy. People who grew up in a meritocracy give up and submit to an underperforming DEI culture. That is what happened at The Boeing Company. — OMG: The damage DEI has done cannot be measured. It reminds me of McCarthyism.
Bestselling author and one of the most frequent flyers on the lolita express to Epstein's paedophile island. What a guy.
I am sick of treating Israel as the eternal victim. This makes it so people can't call Israel back from the brink of becoming a complete terrorist state.
if plagiarism is not a fireable offense in academia then why would anyone with any sense write an original paper? this is the one place where copying someone else's work is absolutely unacceptable and to have the head of the school do it to get to where he/she is is appalling. i would be livid if someone plagiarized my work and moved up the ranks as a result. it's academia. plagiarism is cancer.
Disappointed that Steven said the plagiarism of the head at Harvard was a 'side issue' and not worthy of her removal. I worked for a school system in which a superintendent copied a note from her child's school and sent it to the school she ran and was fired (not really, forced to resign). I also went to a college in which the president was caught plagiarizing and he also resigned. Amazing at the ivies there are different rules, moral and codes of conduct. My wife (who is ivy) and I would joke that in the media when Obama would change his opinion he would "evolve" but when Bush changed he "flip flopped." So now when I catch her in something I will say: I get it you evolved…when for me it is a lie.
Pinker is still part of the "intellectual" problem these institutions should be promoting facts, not ideology, two mutually exclusive entities.
Many things have combined in the last 50 years to ended up where we are. Insane Immigration, Free Trade (Globalists)
Islamisme financed by Moslem Brotherhood, and the Rich Arabs Oil countries and their wealth, and finally the left with
woke, lgbt+, trans, the sherry on the cake the climate activists. This combination and link can explain in part.
stupidity, ignorance and mob mentality to be accepted and liked . So hard to ignore those links. zit is to me the only way
to explain the decadence of logic.
Of course Pinker will not say Harvard was most right when it was a Puritan/Congregationalist institution and trained ministers for many years.
He is a bigot and a dishonest person, time will bring it out fully
Too many woman?
The criterion is inter-independence
I mean you guys literally discriminated against and called for all white men to die, do you think we care a whole huggy-buggy bunch now that those POC are calling for your heads? The Golem turning on its master? ("If only there was a parable about this somewhere in a book we read!")
Welcome to what it feels like, I wanna say. I do WANT to say. But can't.
Because if we're gonna get out of this hole that you put us both in, then we're going to have to work together.
Unfortunately, this is still the state religion. Look at what Disney's putting out. These people didn't stop believing. They still are going through the motions.
So now we need a new state religion. Something with thymos and includes us, or we're out and we'll leave you to be devoured first.
Make your choice.
Hey Pinker, what about when you have those 3-D glasses? you mean they are only 2 1/2 D. I want my money back!
Let Steven Pinker be the New President of Harvard. Problems SOLVED.
ReasonTV… enemy of all Americans. Waging war on pain medicines.
YOU ARE ADMITTING THAT LIBERALS HAVE LIMITED 'VALUES' , OR TRYING TO SAY THAT INCONSISTENT CARPING OF VALUES LIMITS THEM??
PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO PUSH ME TO THE OTHER PARTIES VERY MUCH HERE INSTEAQD OF JUST ELIMINATE THE FAILING COWARDICE OF NAGGING 'VALUES VALUES" ALL THE STUPID TIME .
What is this talk about Harvard being used as a hedge fund? Our government giving them billions of dollars a year ?
They have $52,000,000,000 ( $52 Billion on hand )
Anyone interested in finding out more about these things?
Let’s not forget that this guy was on Epstein’s island.
For students, plagiarism is a hangable offence. It's always expressly prohibited in the course syllabus. Why not at the higher institutional level? There should never be an exception if they are serious that it's a value. Otherwise it could be considered a joke.
Claudine Gay being cancelled over her plagiarism was NOT a side issue. It demonstrated rhe leftist weaponization of cancel culture, they are willing to destroy anyone with 1990s liberal opinions, but not people who actively commit crimes. Fraud in her case.
Wonderful discussion. Universities should not play the role of parents. They should encourage rational thinking in accordance with evidence evaluation. And yes, facts can change mental models. The Roslings and Pinker enlightened me on the factual nature of the world.
I heard Pinker was born with that haircut. He has never been seen without it.
Man he looks like Ronnie James Dio in a wig in that thumbnail.