Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker says President Donald Trump’s criticism of the university as a “liberal mess” isn’t entirely off base, though he pushed back on the harshness of
Trump’s language.
In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker asked Pinker whether Trump had “a point” in claiming Harvard had been hiring “woke, radical left idiots and birdbrains.”
“I do not agree with that,” Pinker responded. “I think there is a grain of truth. I think there should be more voices on the right at Harvard.”
The exchange comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and elite universities over campus controversies and allegations of antisemitism. Earlier this year, the administration sought to cut more than $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard over its failure to comply with recommendations from a federal antisemitism task force. A federal judge in Boston blocked that move in September.
While acknowledging ideological imbalance on campus, Pinker emphasized that Trump should not be the arbiter of which viewpoints belong at the university.
Pressed on where he believes Harvard has faltered, Pinker pointed to a series of incidents in which faculty or students faced backlash for expressing controversial opinions. “There have been too many incidents in which someone has expressed a controversial opinion and has been shamed or canceled,” he said.
He cited the case of former Harvard lecturer Carole Hooven, who taught human evolutionary biology and said she felt unsupported by the university after comments she made during a Fox News interview about biological sex. Hooven told Fox News in 2021 that some on campus seemed to prioritize ideology over scientific understanding. “The facts are that there are, in fact, two sexes — male and female — and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce,” she said.
Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Photo by Ingfbruno, Wikimedia commons.
