“A few examples: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racism has 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.”
Call me when a Harvard President utters just one of these phrases.
It's not ideal, but it could be a lot worse - it could be as bad as the more unhinged critics suggest it is! I'd guess that academics today have more freedom to be heretical than they did in the 17th century.
But the President shapes the climate of HR, and countless other campus initiatives that affect hiring and career advancement. It would be interesting to know if those examples came from young faculty or those with Pinker-level job security.
I think the issue with Harvard is that they, after the example set by Columbia U, rolled their practices back to the pre-civil rights era and acknowledged, facilitated, and even encouraged the vile treatment of Jewish students in literally the same way black students were treated pre-MLK, and are still praised for doing so by most of academia.
The rest of the free world knows better. Therefore, the consequence needs to be relative to the nightmares they caused on certain students, just for being born of a certain descent.
As for academia, the biggest scare I see right now is the suppression of scientific findings that don’t align ideologically with the gatekeepers.
To me, it seems justified to tie the practices of the university to skepticism in releasing papers that are fair and balanced. I feel as though I no longer have a reason to trust them.
“A few examples: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racism has 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.”
Call me when a Harvard President utters just one of these phrases.
Fair! Presidents have a different role than academics, though, and what's most important is that the latter can utter those phrases.
So academics are allowed to utter heretical phrases, but the President must stay within the confines of accepted dogma.
Sounds like Harvard has returned to its founding principles…from the 17th century.
It's not ideal, but it could be a lot worse - it could be as bad as the more unhinged critics suggest it is! I'd guess that academics today have more freedom to be heretical than they did in the 17th century.
But far less than the 20th century.
But the President shapes the climate of HR, and countless other campus initiatives that affect hiring and career advancement. It would be interesting to know if those examples came from young faculty or those with Pinker-level job security.
I think the issue with Harvard is that they, after the example set by Columbia U, rolled their practices back to the pre-civil rights era and acknowledged, facilitated, and even encouraged the vile treatment of Jewish students in literally the same way black students were treated pre-MLK, and are still praised for doing so by most of academia.
The rest of the free world knows better. Therefore, the consequence needs to be relative to the nightmares they caused on certain students, just for being born of a certain descent.
As for academia, the biggest scare I see right now is the suppression of scientific findings that don’t align ideologically with the gatekeepers.
To me, it seems justified to tie the practices of the university to skepticism in releasing papers that are fair and balanced. I feel as though I no longer have a reason to trust them.