Steven Pinker:
Yes, so Harvard does have some problems. I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard to deal with them.
There have been some cancellations of faculty for saying politically sensitive things, leading to outrage mobs. There is a political skew of the faculty, with probably not enough conservative voices. There have been protests that have crossed the line from expression of opinion to intimidation and silencing.
On the other hand, Harvard is a really big place. There are 24,000 students, 12 schools, three campuses, 2,700 professors. And if there’s an incident here or there, it can go viral and it can make people think that Harvard is nothing but cancellations or nothing but intrusive demonstrations, when, in fact, most of what happens at Harvard are students learning, professors doing research, people publishing their findings, including many politically incorrect findings.
The fact that every once in a while something catches the attention of someone and there’s a mob doesn’t mean that Harvard lives under a regime where no one can publish anything but a left-wing opinion. Far from it.
