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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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The NYT wants you to know that Harvard has "no way out." I'm sure Harvard University with its 53.2 billion dollar endowment is going to start having trouble attracting researchers:

Trump has stripped extensive federal funding from Harvard. Let’s say a judge gives back all of that money for this year. Half of the university’s research budget comes from the federal government. Where is Harvard going to get the money in the year after that, and the year after that? If you’re a researcher, do you want to be doing research at a school where your funding is in question?

I suspect they're scaring their readership to rack in the clicks. The article is being embraced by Rightist influencer people eager for confirmation of their "victory." They're COOKED! Back in reality, the Democrats will likely take back the Presidency in 2028, if not then then very likely by 2032. It will eventually dawn on these people that Harvard remains massively prestigious while nobody knows or cares about Fred's Car Wash in Des Moines Iowa.

Harvard Related piggyback: Steven Pinker published a mostly defense of Harvard in an NYT opinion piece titled "Harvard Derangement Syndrome". I call it a mostly defense, because I don't think the title is appropriate. While the purpose and conclusion of the article is to defend Harvard against Federal interference the meat is more rational examination.

Some pulled paragraphs:

Finally, our students are not blank slates which we can inscribe at will. Young people are shaped by peers more than most people realize. Students are shaped by the peer cultures in their high schools, at Harvard and (especially with social media) in the world. In many cases, students’ politics are no more attributable to indoctrination by professors than are their green hair and pierced septums.

A poll of my colleagues on the academic freedom council turned up many examples in which they felt political narrowness had skewed research.... In climate policy, it led to a focus on demonizing fossil fuel companies rather than acknowledging the universal desire for abundant energy; in pediatrics, taking all adolescents’ reported gender dysphoria at face value; in public health, advocating maximalist government interventions rather than cost-benefit analyses; in history, emphasizing the harms of colonialism but not of communism or Islamism; in social science, attributing all group disparities to racism but never to culture; and in women’s studies, permitting the study of sexism and stereotypes but not sexual selection, sexology or hormones (not coincidentally, Hooven’s specialty)...

Universities should set the expectation that faculty members leave their politics at the classroom door, and affirm the rationalist virtues of epistemic humility and active open-mindedness...

If the federal government doesn’t force Harvard to reform, what will? ... Universities could give a stronger mandate to the external “visiting committees” that ostensibly audit departments and programs but in practice are subject to regulatory capture. University leaders constantly get an earful from disgruntled alumni, donors and journalists, and they should use it, judiciously, as a sanity check. The governing boards should be more tuned in to university affairs and take more responsibility for its health. The Harvard Corporation is so reclusive that when two of its members dined with members of the academic freedom council in 2023, The Times deemed it worthy of a news story.

Pinker concedes much. Too much for the NYT commenters who might lambast him more in other contexts. He likely doesn't concede enough for those that want to see Harvard suffer. His position negates neutrality, though he attempts to refute this conflict of interest with with his own demonstrated principles.

I find the antisemitism weapons repugnant. I would consider it a good thing for student-activists and campus administrations alike to learn the value of viewpoint diversity, limitations of protest, boundaries of conduct at university, what an education is meant for, and so on. That's not going to happen regardless. Pick your poison.

I would consider it a good thing for student-activists and campus administrations alike to learn...limitations of protest, boundaries of conduct at university... That's not going to happen regardless. Pick your poison.

As an empirical question, they are learning the limits and boundaries through personal experience. I just don't like what the limits are.

From the article:

The nation desperately needs this sense of proportionality in dealing with its educational and cultural institutions. Harvard, as I am among the first to point out, has serious ailments. The sense that something is not well with the university is widespread, and it’s led to sympathy, even schadenfreude, with Mr. Trump’s all-out assault. But Harvard is an intricate system that developed over centuries and constantly has to grapple with competing and unexpected challenges. The appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.

Fact is, the right has tried that, most recently with SFFA v Harvard, which Harvard essentially thumbed its nose at. And Pinker himself, by his own testimony in this article, has tried that. It did diddlysquat; Harvard doubled down on the bad behavior. So either those opposed to what Harvard is doing must back down, or they must escalate.

Also, universities are committed to free speech, which includes speech we don’t like. A corporation can fire an outspoken employee; a university can’t, or shouldn’t.

FIRE (not a right wing organization) listed Harvard as the worst US university for free speech two years running. And it got the worst score EVER for any US university in 2023. Harvard cannot credibly use a commitment to free speech as a defense for anything, because it lacks one. Yes, I know Pinker objects to this ranking, but not really credibly.

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