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Does racial diversity benefit academic departments? Do racial preferences harm their beneficiaries by putting qualified individuals under a cloud of suspicion and mismatching students with the academic demands of their universities? Are female scientists with female mentors less successful than those with male mentors?

These are just some of the intentionally provocative questions with which?Steve Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, begins a chapter focusing on academic freedom in his latest book.

While they?may?tempt some readers?to ¡°[throw] the book across the room¡±, the Canadian cognitive psychologist?told?̽»¨ÊÓƵ?that these are all issues that resulted in the censoring, sacking, harassment or even assault of ¡°serious scholars, scientists, and writers¡±.

In?, Pinker explores the idea of ¡°common knowledge¡±, which he said can be used to explain everything from financial bubbles to ¡°Kardashian celebrity (being famous for being famous)¡± ¨C along with academic cancel culture.

¡°What is it about humans that leads to the urge to censor and punish and silence people for their opinions?¡± he asks.

This is a ¡°particularly acute problem in academia, given that we¡¯re in the business of evaluating ideas, and you can¡¯t evaluate ideas unless you can express those ideas that no one is omniscient or infallible, it¡¯s only by getting ideas out there, showing what¡¯s wrong with them that we can ever collectively hope to approach the truth¡±, he said.

¡°That underscores the puzzle of why academics of all people should be so eager to shut people down and censor and retract and de-platform people.¡±

Pinker said academics?are particularly susceptible to self-censoring?because of their precarious employment contracts and risk of not being promoted ¨C along with a fear of being ¡°demonised and ostracised, being tarred with pejorative labels like transphobe, misogynist, racist and homophobe¡±.

He believes that US higher education has had a sharper fall off in reputation than any other institution because it has been ¡°enforcing orthodoxies and repressing disagreement¡±.

¡°The perception is that it has become an intellectual monoculture, that it¡¯s veered increasingly toward the left, that it punishes any opinion that is not firmly on the hard left, that it¡¯s become more filled with impenetrable jargon, [and] more likely to embrace extreme opinions.¡±

Pinker claimed that ¡°extreme activists¡± have made it their life¡¯s work to enforce certain orthodoxies and have intimidated other academics into being silent ¨C while university leaders have acquiesced into ¡°incoherent¡± positions.

¡°Their principle of governance is ¡®don¡¯t let trouble arise, don¡¯t attract negative headlines, put out little fires as soon as they arise¡¯¡­instead of actually adopting principled positions and using their leadership to implement them.¡±

Pinker, co-founder of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, argues that scientific credibility is being damaged as a result.

¡°Scientists want to make inroads and have public opinion better aligned with scientific consensus. What they ought to do is not teach more science because that probably won¡¯t help, but rather depoliticise science, make it so that particular positions are not identity badges of loyalty to a political or religious coalition.

¡°The apparent politicisation of science, and the apparent punishment of heretics, alienates people from science. It makes them think that science is just yet another political tribe, one that they may not belong to.¡±

Although he is critical of those on the left of academia, Pinker said?the current US government poses a far greater threat.

However, he fears that universities not being self-critical in this moment could backfire as a strategy and that there is a growing recognition that ¡°the repression of ideas and the intellectual monoculture have gotten to an extreme and need to be addressed¡±.

¡°Only if we can credibly show that we¡¯re capable of change, can we fend off the intrusive pressure from the federal government.¡±

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com