Steven Pinker: Can Harvard Be Saved?

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.

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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. 

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

 

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Comments

[Rick James]

Nick Gillespie: Hello my fellow kids! What's up with the cuckoo bananas campus PC stuff?

[Rick James]

27:20— Is the Trump administration uniquely anti-intellectual?

Well, he doesn't believe we can run the entire world on subsidized wind farms and he can define a woman, so I'd say the answer is a big yes.

[mad.casual]

Can Harvard be saved?

Not by this guy:
Pinker defends the role of federal science funding but cautions against political micromanagement of academia, emphasizing the need for independent scholarly governance.

"If we could just keep getting the money without any sort of external governance, oversight, or accountability there would be no moral hazard."

Alternative headline:
Harvard "Educated" Psychologist Publicly Fails Econ 101 And Ethics 102

Reason "If given the choice between utterly stupid, but morally good, and dimly intelligent, but cravenly evil, we choose the latter." Magazine.

[Public Entelectual]

Pinker wasn't on deck to save Harvard when student radicals physically evicted its Dean from University Hall in 1969.

The common denominator its last six Presidents, Bok, Rudenstine, Summers, Faust, Bacow & Gay share is a disinterest in Harvard's continuity arising from their having been educated in the very different cultures of MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Bryn Mawr.

[Rick James]

52:50— Why are public intellectuals pushing for religious revival?

Probably for the same reason Richard Dawkins now refers to himself as a Christian Atheist.

[Mother's Lament - (Sarcasian Meanister of Foreign Affairs)]

After 200 years of pushing for the destruction of Christianity, they are finally coming to realize that for all its perceived faults the other options were way worse.

Well, maybe not Buddhism, but the karmic fatalism that usually accompanies it harshes on the individualism that many Western thinkers hold dear.

[Speaking for normal people]

NO, that is another Pinker lie. See his 'reaction' to Aayan Hirsi Ali's conversion. She is much more even-handed, intelligent, well-spoken and esp kind than this assshole

[MWAocdoc]

I have only one question: When did Pinker first come to these opinions - before or after the Trump administration? Since I will not be listening to the whole interview, I would appreciate it if someone who has listened to it tells me whether that question was answered or not. There is currently no shortage of outraged academics who were fine with non-neutral enforcement of free speech and academic freedom policies in favor of socialism and social revisionism over the last few decades.

[Rick James]

As an atheist, I would love to see Pinker debate Tom Holland who makes an fantastic case that what Pinker refers to as "Universal Human Rights" and the like are almost entirely Christian, and in particular, protestant ideals. They are not just something that Humans naturally evolved into. Especially when Pinker himself acknowledges that evolution is not about "that which benefits the group" but is a mechanism that simply favors replicators.

[Rick James]

One of my favorite tweets from Holland:

There is no God, and Richard Dawkins is his prophet.

[Rick James]

Tom Holland
@holland_tom
·
May 16, 2021
The assumption that all human life is of equal value is, as
@RichardDawkins
intimates, a theological one. As Nietzsche long ago recognised, "when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet."

[sarcasmic]

I don't think that's true at all. People can see the value of morality without fearing divine retribution.

[Rick James]

You're confused on what the argument is about. The argument isn't about the existence of divine retribution, the argument is about the nature of the morality. Morality is entirely relative to cultural constraints. Dawkins has begun to realize this which is... again, WHY he now calls himself a Christian Atheist.

[sarcasmic]

I think it depends more one a person's source of morality. Someone who draws their morality from Christianity will have a different set of morals than someone who draws from Islam, or a libertarians who draws their morality from applying logic and reason to principles like the NAP. And all three of those people could be in conflict with what culture deems morality to be.

[Mother's Lament - (Sarcasian Meanister of Foreign Affairs)]

Islam drew it's morality from Christianity. It started first as a Christian denomination, then as a heretical Christian cult, then as a full blown religion of its own.
The Koran is cribbed from a lot of fifth and sixth century Christian writings and legends, many of which still exist.
There's a reason why Islam believes that Jesus is the messiah born of a virgin and will return one day.

[sarcasmic]

Looks like the muted Canadian anthropologist is weighing in. Should I unmute his deceitful ass to see if he's making a good faith comment for the first time this year, or just another attack? Nah. The piece of shit just ain't worth it.

[Bertram Guilfoyle]

muted

Nobody believes you.

[Strawmancasmic, Town Drunk and Gay for Booze]

Sarc is a zero credibility commenter.

[Mother's Lament - (Sarcasian Meanister of Foreign Affairs)]

You know he read it, or he wouldn't have noted it was different that the usual "Fuck off, Troll" I tend to give him.

[Otto Penn, American President 2021-2025]

He doesn’t mute anyone. He’s just a gutless pussy. He’s pretty much run from me for two years now.

He really shouldn’t have physically threatened me.

[MWAocdoc]

It is not true that all moral principles and moral systems are "relative" to cultures. It is possible to formulate moral principles and systems based on a testable hypothesis of outcomes. As mentioned above, the non-aggression principle can be tested scientifically to see whether societies organized around it have better outcomes than other societies. All you have to do is choose a desired measurable outcome.

[Rick James]

Tom Holland
@holland_tom
·
Mar 31, 2024
Replying to
@holland_tom
The Nietzschean question - can you keep the frameworks of Christian morality after killing the Christian god - is one that is bound to haunt all those who define themselves as ‘cultural Christians’ (as Dawkins, to his credit, is honest enough to admit).

To be clear, Tom Holland is an atheist.

[Rick James]

I mean, check this tweet out... sorry I haven't been posting the links so I'll try to do better. But... seriously:

Tom Holland
@holland_tom
·
Sep 20, 2019
Replying to
@holland_tom
One of the many ways in which Dawkins, when he writes about religion, is as much a faith-based preacher as any of the creationists he so despises is his readiness to put the cart of what he wants to believe ahead of the horse of the actual evidence
Quote
George Heath-Whyte
@GHeathWhyte
·
Sep 20, 2019
Reading @RichardDawkins new book “Outgrowing God”, and as an Assyriologist I've had a couple of major face-palms moments. (A THREAD)

[sarcasmic]

I think Sowell said something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing here: the two places where unworkable ideas can flourish is religion and academia.

[mad.casual]

My favorite "The Office Homophobe" moment from him was always the concern he voiced in The God Delusion about how Dyson accepting the Templeton Prize would be construed as an endorsement of religion, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that Dyson considered himself religious and described himself as a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian.

Even non-specific to Dyson, it would seem out of place to say anything similar about Oppenheimer or Gödel or Mendel or Bayes or Descartes... especially when any devout Christian, cultural Christian, or even remotely religion-adjacent would arrive at the non-sociopathic "Good for him." take out of hand.

[Strawmancasmic, Town Drunk and Gay for Booze]

I knew what the link was before I clicked on it. That’s a great sketch.

[Speaking for normal people]

THey are certainly not a development, just the opposite says Cicero
“there will not be one such law in Rome and another in Athens, one now and another in the future, but all peoples at all times will be embraced by a single and eternal unchangeable law.”

And I got that from Libertarianism. org

Most historians would agree that LOGOS is the common thread of Judeo-Christian Biblical religion and the Philosophia Perennis. But not of Islam, so SP's stupid equation of the two --- does it come from hate ?

[Chupacabra]

I'm sure Harvard will come up with a Final Solution to their problems.

[Mother's Lament - (Sarcasian Meanister of Foreign Affairs)]

Jews and Israel supporters get to go to camp!
All expenses paid.

[Strawmancasmic, Town Drunk and Gay for Booze]

It’s a culinary camp! And Muslim students are volunteering to show the Jewish students how the ovens work.

[Mother's Lament - (Sarcasian Meanister of Foreign Affairs)]

Harvard: "Let's bake a kike"

Reason: "It's pronounced, let's bake a 'cake'"

Harvard: *smiles*

[Otto Penn, American President 2021-2025]

They’ll probably staff the ovens with all those student. VISA holders that JeffSarc reveres.

[sarcasmic]

Someone did the math and figured that Harvard could provide free education in perpetuity with its endowment. So yeah, they'll survive just fine.

[Bertram Guilfoyle]

Someone did the math

Was it Hamas?

[MWAocdoc]

To be fair, this was never about tuition. Government money usually comes in the form of research grants for the professors and graduate students. If they cut those off, professors will lose a third to a half of their incomes, and graduate students will have no funding for their theses and dissertations.

[sarcasmic]

Ok. So if federal funds are cut off, what about private funds? If the research is valuable, then the private sector should step in. That's the libertarian answer isn't it?

[Otto Penn, American President 2021-2025]

That all sounds terrific.

[Speaking for normal people]

Facts not sarcasm: Harvard has an endowment of $53 BILLION

[InsaneTrollLogic (Did the penguin tell you to do this?)]

Wrong question. The question is, “should Harvard be saved?”

My answer is “no”.

[mad.casual]

Right. Full Rorschach on their social culture:

This university is afraid of me. I have seen it's true face. The lecture halls are extended group masturbatory sessions and the dorms are full of jizz and when the drains finally crust over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and plagiarism will foam up about their waists and all the diversity hires and admins will look up and shout "Save us!"...

...and I'll look down, and whisper "no."

[Strawmancasmic, Town Drunk and Gay for Booze]

Although it would be unconstitutional, it would bring joyous pain to the left if Trump seized Harvard’s endowment and transformed the school into the new Trump University.

[MWAocdoc]

I suggest that you are still choosing the wrong question. Since the implication concerns Harvard's soul, not its corporeal existence, the answer is still "no" - because Harvard is incurably socialist at its very core. The only thing that is threatened organically lately is research grants funding professors' incomes and graduate students' research and diplomas.

[TJJ2000]

Harvard summarized, "Why won't people *willingly* pay for our BS-Indoctrination!" /s

[NoVaNick]

Why does Harvard rank so highly?
1. Money
2. It’s been around for almost 400 years, and along with other ivies, a degree from there is a ticket to access most positions of power.

[MWAocdoc]

This is a holdover relic of the past when Harvard used to be "exclusive" and the graduates used to be almost all western European descendants of wealthy upper social classes (old money and new) but is now mostly mystique rather than actual. Harvard's reputation has not had much to do with the quality of their graduates as rulers for more than a century.

[sarcasmic]

The vast majority of Harvard students are there because mom or dad went there and then contributed money afterwards. I think they're called legacies or something.

[Uncle Jay]

If you give Harvard millions or are politically connected, you will get in at that snob factory.
Superior academics and promising intellectual capabilities are rarely considered despite the best propaganda efforts by its admission officials.

[Speaking for normal people]

Not quite, they announced very recently a Math Remedial course for students. Algebra !!!

[Use the Schwartz]

I'm trying to muster up sympathy for DEI/Hamas era Harvard, even the "good parts" that Pinker cites.

Behold my field of fucks, for they are barren.

[See.More]

Aprapos.

[Winston in Wonderland]

"Can Harvard be Saved?"

Who cares! Long ago, Harvard (and most Ivies) ceased to be relevant to anybody but other members of the chattering class.

Want top notch economic research? Contract with Stanford or Chicago.

Want top notch Semiconductor research? Stanford or Berkeley.

You get the idea.

[Uncle Jay]

Fuck Harvard.
Their alumni give over one billion dollars to that snob factory, and still wants billions more from the taxpayers?
I say not only no, but hell no.

[Uncle Jay]

If you give Harvard millions or are politically connected, you will get in at that snob factory.
Superior academics and promising intellectual capabilities are rarely considered despite the best propaganda efforts by its admission officials.

[Eeyore]

The two prerequisites to attend Harvard that I could just never master were kneeling down and bending over.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Yep, there are two types of men…pinker men and stinker men. I’ve always been a pinker man! Of course some pinkers are stinkers…and I likey!! I’m a baaaaaaaaaad boy!!

[Speaking for normal people]

HIs wife is even sillier . Her interview explaining away religious belief with 'evolutionary psychology' Whatever God is He is not going to keep faith from people unitl they grasp evolutionary psychology.
Pinker's view is that God has the same paternal and negative view of people who are not well-educated and high IQ. Listen to him or his wife and you realize what they would do if they could

[Speaking for normal people]

Rhetoric, Logic, History and others find great fault with Pinker. He is a blustery pompous smiling hater.

So on religion , compare someone who devoted much of their life to historical study of religion and Pinker
"The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fit the facts of its history." - STEVEN PINKER
Toynbee replies: the Graeco-Roman civilization was not destroyed by Christianity but “decayed from inherent defects of its own.”

Just 4 hateful things about Pinker
Why must Mother Teresa be lumped with Muslim terrorists under 'religion'
Why must real research , like Tom Holland's , be dismissed by wordsmithing : Christianity is the seedbed of everything that makes the West what it is. Then he says without it I worry about where we may end up.(Tom Holland)

And only a bigot would have his response to world-famous female atheist Aayan Hirsi Ali's conversion to Christianity "The brave & brilliant Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of my heroes, but I disagree w her here ("Why I am now a Christian"). The alternative to theistic morality is not atheism but humanism, the use of reason to enhance human flourishing." There you go, Aayan, Steven likes you but you can't just convert and you certainly can't be reasonable.
That did it for me.

FInally, One article on Minerva notes that Pinker's ignorance of the history of philosophy and theology is "appalling," -- no it's worse than that , reminds me of cruel drubbing Stephen Hawking took when he ventured into philosophy.

Readers can start there. SP is all these things : reductionist, nominalist, materialist, utilitarian, that last quality he has (in my opinion) much like Nazi apologists had. Compare them

[Speaking for normal people]

It took SP many years to see what he now calls obvious. Don't be fooled , this is survival of the fittest explanation. If he thought this way he would have said something long before. Cowardice" maybe but he seems to be mainly fooling himself.

He says : to the dean of Harvard in a letter : "I am frequently challenged on the integrity of the academy. “Why should we trust what academics say on climate change, or vaccine safety, or gun control?” they ask; “Everyone knows that universities are echo chambers of political correctness, with no commitment to impartiality or principle.”"
Well I would say that on those 3 issues he himself is egregiously wrong
Climate
=====> Pinker called climate change arguably “the biggest problem in human history.” Al GOre with bad hair, folks

Guns
Utterly stupid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZT1lI9weiA&t=6s

How Steven Pinker Fooled the World - Gun Mortality = Tribal Violence?!

Vaccines
"I have to trust the people in white coats" !!!!
Pinker also talked about science literacy, saying that people who don't believe in vaccines or climate change scored just as high as those who do.

"In the tests of scientific literacy, in terms of the people who deny the scientific consensus on a number of issues are no more ignorant, no more illiterate than people who accept it,” he said.

“I have been vaccinated against COVID-19 a half a dozen times, but if you ask me how it works I'll say, ‘Something, something antibodies, something something the immune system.’ Basically, I have to trust the people in the white coats.