I’ve known Steve Pinker personally for about 25 years and I’ve got to say: This guy is getting better as he gets older, especially when it comes to interviews. Here’s a link to the first time I talked with him on the record for Reason, way back in 2002, right around the publication of The Blank Slate.
I caught up with him most recently just a few weeks ago on a trip to Boston/Cambridge (also interviewed his Harvard colleague, the economist Jason Furman, who spewed ‘neo-liberal’ fire at Biden and Trump). We talked about how things have transpired over the past six months or so since Donald Trump won the presidency. On the plus side, Harvard has officially embraced institutional neutrality, denounced DEI, and seems more interested in ideological diversity—all things Steve has called for for years, including in my last interview with him (from about a year ago).
On the minus side, it’s not clear that Harvard—and other bastions of higher ed—are really committed to change. And the Trump admin is really going after Harvard (and other schools) in ways that would definitely compromise academic freedom (this interview took place before Harvard admin told the Trump admin to screw off).
In what follows, Steve defends the role of federal science funding but cautions against political micromanagement of academia, emphasizing the need for independent scholarly governance. And we talk about the legacy of
, whom we both interviewed during his farewell tour last year.We also discuss the massively positive impact of declining religiosity on moral progress and the concept of "common knowledge" as explored in his forthcoming book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.
Here’s an auto-generated list of topics, followed by links to the interview at YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and Soundcloud.
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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