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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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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.

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.

If you want to govern, you're going to deal with problems that transcend politics. There are potholes in the road, Democrats and Republicans both want them fixed. You might need to work with the guy who fixes them even if he's an a**hole.

The "friend-enemy distinction" people lack a theory of politics for that. Harvard is the enemy, Carl Schmitt, blah blah blah. Never occurs to them that their job fight involve literal or figurative pothole-filling rather than zero-sum political warfare. As Pinker said:

Just as clear is what won’t work: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.

It becomes inevitable, at the start of the new dynasty: to throw all the old scholars and burn them with their books. There is approximately a snowball's chance in hell that anyone in Harvard will cooperate, Politics is the question of the posssible. It is impossible to do politics with the left. Best to cut the gordiian knot.

If someone calls you Hitler, believe them as an honest expression of non-cooperation.

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