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《纽约时报》2025/5/23发表哈佛教授平克(Steven Pinker)的文章,题为”Harvard Derangement Syndrome”。那是一篇好文章。网上已经有中文译本,题目翻译成”哈佛错乱综合症”。我把网上一篇中文译文及英文全文附在此文末尾,供参阅。

这篇小文先对文章题目的含义做一点考究注释。

“Harvard”是哈佛,”Derangement Syndrome”的意思,按ChatGPT ,是:

【”Derangement syndrome”可以翻译为中文”紊乱综合征”或”错乱综合征”,具体含义需根据上下文确定。

在不同的语境中,”derangement” 可能表示:

心理或情绪紊乱:指精神状态的异常,如精神错乱、情绪失衡等。

身体机能紊乱:指生理上的失调,例如内分泌系统紊乱或其他功能性障碍。

数学/逻辑中的错位问题:在组合数学中,”derangement” 是一种排列问题,表示没有元素保持在原位置的排列方式。】

如果较真地分析一下,”Harvard Derangement Syndrome”的具体含义,可以有两种解释:(1)哈佛患了”错乱综合征”,(2)别人患了由哈佛引发的”错乱综合征”,更准确地说,别人患了因为反对哈佛而导致的”错乱综合征”。

第一种解释很直观。”哈佛–错乱–综合症”三个词结合成一个词组,中文容易产生第一个词是隐含的主语的印象。第二种解释,就中文语感而言,有点弯弯绕,需要提供一些背景资讯。

综述维基几个条目,可以把这个词语的源头追溯到”Trump derangement syndrome(川普错乱综合征)”,再追溯到”Bush derangement syndrome(布什错乱综合征)”。2003年,一位保守派专栏作家Charles Krauthammer首创了”Bush derangement syndrome(布什错乱综合征)一词,用来指称”本来正常的人们对布什的政策及总统自身职位产生的急性发作的偏执狂病症”。这是一个保守派批评自由派的贬义词。2015年,Esther Goldberg首次使用”Trump derangement syndrome(川普错乱综合征)”,指称”否定且藐视川普的’权势共和党人'”。这也是一个指责川普政敌的贬义词。据报道,川普本人曾经在2016年在他的推文中用过这个词。他骂对手有病:”有些人讨厌我与俄罗斯总统普京相处的事实。””他们宁愿陷入战争也不愿看到这一点。这是川普失序症候群!”

顺这个线索,可以合理判断:平克用”哈佛错乱综合症”,指的是:川普当局,而不是哈佛,患了”错乱综合症”。也就是,川普当局患了反对哈佛的”错乱综合症”。因此,平克文章的标题,译作”反哈佛错乱综合症”更恰当。不过,在文末附录的中译文中,我未作改动。

下面再来做一些评论。

平克是卓越的学者和作家,著有《人性中的善良天使(The Better Angels of Our Nature)》、《当下的启蒙(Enlightenment Now)》、《Rationality(理性)》等杰作兼畅销书。其中贯彻的主线,如《当下的启蒙》一书的副标题所昭示,是阐发、论证”理性、科学、人道主义与进步”的内容与意义。

平克在这篇文章中,严厉批判了川普打击哈佛的倒行逆施,也历数哈佛多年来在维护言论自由、学术自由等领域的偏误过错,以及他本人和同事坚持原则的长期重大努力。其中提到哈佛最近自行检讨而实施改进的举措,以及他提供的进一步提升学校素质的建议。

现在美国面临的危机是,川普的野蛮政府,试图摧毁哈佛大学,美国高等教育与科研的代表性机构,自1636年以来一直享有的独立性。国土安全部的部长诺姆(Noem)在发给哈佛的宣布取消哈佛招收外国学生资格的信中,明确提出,这是对所有大学的警告。

川普打击哈佛蓄谋已久,那是他统领的MAGA运动的重大目标。其根源,是民粹主义的反精英主义。反精英主义的敌人,包括政经工商各界人士,这里特别涉及的,是黑暗的反智主义,反知识界人士和教育研究机构,包括从科学到人文的所有学科。平克文章提到,万斯(J.D. Vance)在2021年的一个演讲的题目就是:”大学是敌人”(”The Universities Are the Enemy”)。

关于美国社会长期存在的反智主义,有一本名著,霍夫士達特(Richard Hofstadter)的《美國的反智傳統》,1963年出版。2018年,余英時先生为台湾出版的中译本作序,语重心长地写到:【本書出版後轟動一時,我大概在六十年代末便買來細讀一遍。但萬萬沒有想到,「反智論」這一論旨竟對我發生了深刻的影響,使我對中國史上的反智現象進行了多次有系統的反思。一九七三至七五,我回到香港兩年,那正是「文化大革命」籠罩著整個大陸的時代。我終於情不自禁,在一九七五年寫了〈反智論與中國政治傳統〉那篇長文。……這部書為什麼今天又引起很多美國人的興趣呢?我相信這是和川普當選總統分不開的。】

美国目前反智主义的倒行逆施,与中国文革中”工人阶级占领上层建筑”、”工农兵’上、管、改’大学”,是相像而同质的。

关于美国大学与思想界过去几十年中左翼甚至极左翼思潮泛滥,我很早就察觉其错谬及危害。还在国内时,有一本《读书》杂志,1979年创刊,首篇文章是李洪林先生的大作《读书无禁区》,那一下打开了大门,《读书》与其他一些报刊大量发表介绍国外新思想的文章,是文革后思想解放运动的重要资源。不久,汪晖接管《读书》编辑部,与其”新左派”盟友一起,一篇又一篇,发表充满不知所云的”大词”的文章,与我所理解的反映当代主流价值的思想大相径庭,引起我强烈反感。到美国后,才了解到,汪晖等人只是拾美国文化界左翼的牙慧。从那时起,看到美国校园中,解构主义、文化相对主义、身份政治、批判性种族理论、警醒文化、性别认同,等等,一路推进,都是显学。其中有些理论有正面的历史意义,例如身份认同,为反对种族主义做出重大贡献。但后来的身份政治,就导致部落主义。总体而言,学院左派思潮包含太多片面、扭曲、偏激的成分,而且,还导致了过火的DEI(多元平等包容)的政策实践。纯就学术而言,理论的是非,要通过学术争论来判别。就社会效果而言,在川普第一任期间,我就认为左翼、极左翼的思想与行动是导致川普上台的”助力”,是激发MAGA运动的重要因素,文化、社会领域的因素。我曾经撰写、发表过几篇长文,批判(极)左翼的文化相对主义和身份政治等谬误。

读平克的长文时,回顾自己的思想经历,就更赞赏他的见识与行动。一方面,哈佛及其他一流大学,确实需要针对以往偏误过错进行重大改革。另一方面,美国社会,对川普及其政府内的随从官员、MAGA运动中的盲从大众,以摧毁哈佛及所有大学独立性为目的而发动的野蛮攻击,不能容忍、必须击败。

正如平克在文章结尾所说:”摧毁培养与传承知识的机构,是对未来世代的重大罪行。”

**********

中文译文

哈佛错乱综合症

史蒂芬·平克(Steven Pinker)

在我担任哈佛大学教授的22年里,我从不畏惧”咬伤喂养我的手”。2014年,我在《与哈佛的麻烦》(”The Trouble With Harvard”)一文中呼吁,以透明、公平的择优录取政策取代现行那种”蝾螈之眼、蝙蝠之翼的神秘主义”,因为它”隐藏着未知的险恶”。2023年,我提出了”拯救哈佛的五点计划”,敦促大学承诺维护言论自由、制度中立、非暴力、观点多元化,并削弱多元化、公平与包容(D.E.I.)的专断势力。去年秋天,值2023年10月7日事件周年之际,我撰文阐述”我希望哈佛如何教学生谈论以色列”,呼吁校方教导学生直面道德与历史的复杂性。两年前,我与他人共同创立了哈佛学术自由委员会(Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard),自那时起,该委员会便不断挑战校方政策并推动改革。

因此,当我说,如今针对哈佛的口诛笔伐已经彻底失去理智时,我绝无替我的雇主做无脑辩护之意。批评者将哈佛斥为”国家耻辱”、”觉醒式伊斯兰神学院”、”愚人船”、”猖獗反犹仇恨与骚扰的堡垒”、”极端主义骚乱的沼泽”,甚至称其为”伊斯兰主义前哨”,并声称校园的”主流观点”竟是”先摧毁犹太人,才算摧毁西方文明的根基”。

这还不算特朗普总统的评价:他称哈佛是”一所反犹的极左机构””自由派乱局”,乃至”对民主的威胁”,并说它”几乎只雇佣觉醒的、激进左翼的白痴和’鸟脑’,他们只会把’失败’这门课教给学生和所谓的未来领导者”。

这不仅仅是口水战。在对全美研究经费进行大幅削减的同时,特朗普政府还特别针对哈佛,宣布不再向其拨发任何联邦资助。不满足于此,政府又着手阻止哈佛招收外国学生,并威胁将其捐赠基金税率最高提高十五倍,甚至取消其免税非营利地位。

这可称为”哈佛错乱综合症”。作为美国历史最悠久、资金最雄厚、名声最响的大学,哈佛一直备受瞩目:在公众想象中,它既是高等学府的典范,又是针对精英不满情绪的天然汇集地。

心理学家将一种称为”分裂”(splitting)的症状定义为非黑即白思维,在这种模式下,患者只能把生活中的某个人当作至高无上的天使或可憎的恶人,别无他种可能。他们通常会接受辩证行为疗法(dialectical behavior therapy),建议内容大致是:大多数人兼具优点与缺陷;若将他们视为全然丑恶,从长远看无益;当他人让你失望时,虽不舒服,却不必让那份不悦定义你对他们的整体看法——你能否在不让不舒服侵占全部视角的同时,为它留出一席之地?

国家在对待教育与文化机构时,迫切需要这种比例感。正如我率先指出的,哈佛确实存在严重问题。对校况的广泛担忧也助长了对特朗普全面攻势的同情,甚至幸灾乐祸。但哈佛是一个经过数百年演进的复杂体系,不断面临多重且出乎意料的挑战。合适的”治疗”——正如对待其他不完美机构一样——应是诊断各部分所需的具体”良方”,而非割断颈动脉,坐视其血流不止。

哈佛为何成为热门靶心?这是其自身属性所致。

哈佛规模庞大:拥有25,000名学生、2,400名教员,分布于13所学院(包括商学院和牙科学院)。人数越多,怪人和麻烦制造者越容易出现,而他们的怪异行径在当今这个能迅速”走红”的时代,更易让人高估其普遍性。

此外,大学承诺维护言论自由,这包括我们不喜欢的言论。企业可以解雇直言不讳的员工,大学却不能,也不该如此。

哈佛同样并非孤立的修道院,而是全球学术网络的一部分。我们的多数研究生和教员都曾在其他学府受训,参加相同的会议,阅读相同的期刊。尽管哈佛自诩非凡,但几乎所有在此发生的事,在其它研究型大学同样可见。

最后,学生并非白纸,可随意书写。年轻人更多受同龄人影响而非教授塑造。他们在高中、在哈佛,尤其是在社交媒体中形成同伴文化。许多情况下,学生的政治观点与教授是否”洗脑”并无多大关联,就如他们绿色发色和鼻环一样。

然而,对哈佛某些敌意也并非全无根据。多年来,我和同僚为本校学术自由的侵蚀而忧心忡忡,一些知名的”迫害”事例尤其令人痛心:

2021年,生物学家卡萝尔·胡文(Carole Hooven)因在一次采访中解释生物学如何界定”男性”和”女性”,被妖魔化并遭排斥,最终被迫离校。她的”被取消”成为我们创建学术自由委员会的导火索,但这既不是第一次,也不是最后一次。

流行病学家泰勒·范德维尔(Tyler VanderWeele)在有人发现他曾联署2015年反对同性婚姻的最高法院案状后,被迫参加”恢复性司法”会议,低声下气地道歉。

生物工程师基特·帕克(Kit Parker)的一门评估犯罪预防项目的课程,因学生觉得”令人不安”而被叫停。

法学者罗纳德·沙利文(Ronald Sullivan)因代表哈维·韦恩斯坦(Harvey Weinstein)进行辩护,让学生”感到不安全”,被剥夺了宿舍院长职务。

个人权利与表达基金会(FIRE)统计,在过去两年间,哈佛在约250所高校中言论自由排名倒数第一。

这些”取消”不仅对个体不公,也令学术探索畏首畏尾:研究者若稍有不合时宜之言,便可能面对人格抹黑;若保守观点被当作犯罪,则学术求真无从谈起。在沙利文事件中,校方沉迷迎合学生情绪,却未教他们第六修正案之权利,也未阐明法治与暴民正义的区别,实属放弃公民教育之责。

但把它称为”觉醒式神学院”?这无疑是典型的非黑即白思维,亟需通过行为疗法来矫正。仅凭几起轰动性的”取消”事件就把哈佛妖魔化,反而掩盖了更多时候异端观点能自由表达却无人过问的平静。尽管我对哈佛学术自由所遭受的冲击深感痛心,但将其言论自由排名列末,实在难以令人信服。

我先从自己说起。我在哈佛数十载,讲授过许多富有争议的观点——包括性别差异的现实、智力的遗传程度以及暴力的进化根源——并邀请学生据理反驳,但从未引发抗议,反而屡获校方荣誉,与历任系主任、院长及校长关系融洽。

我的大多数同事也是如此:他们依据数据发表研究结论,无惧政治正确的压力。举几个例子:种族确实具有一定的生物学现实性;婚姻有助于降低犯罪;热点警务措施有效;种族主义整体上呈下降趋势;自然拼读法对阅读教学至关重要;触发警示(trigger warnings)弊大于利;非洲人曾参与过奴隶贸易;教育成就一定程度上受基因影响;严厉禁毒有益,而毒品合法化则有害;市场机制能让人们变得更公平、更慷慨……哈佛的日常,就是在无所畏惧地表达观点,而非害怕报复噤若寒蝉。

哈佛的另一个确实存在缺陷、但也不宜被全盘否定的领域,是观点的多样性。根据2023年《哈佛深红报》(The Harvard Crimson)的一项调查,文理学院的教师中有45%自我认定为”自由派”,32%为”非常自由派”,20%为”中间派”,只有3%认定自己是”保守派”或”非常保守派”(调查并未提供”觉醒激进左派白痴和鸟脑”这一选项)。个人权利与表达基金会(FIRE)估计的保守派比例略高,为6%。

大学无需成为小型民主政治,但过度的政治同质化会损害其使命。2015年,一组社会科学家指出,自由派的同温层文化导致他们在研究中犯下偏差:他们测试了对非裔与穆斯林的偏见,却未测试对福音派的偏见,从而匆促得出”自由派比保守派更不偏见”的结论。

我们学术自由委员会的多位同仁,也反映政治狭隘在各自专业中造成不良影响:气候政策一味妖魔化化石燃料企业,却忽略了普遍的能源需求;儿科领域对所有青少年的性别焦虑不加甄别地全盘接纳;公共卫生倡导最大化政府干预,却漠视成本效益;历史学强调殖民主义的危害,却忽视伊斯兰主义的暴行;社会科学将一切群体差距归咎于种族主义,却罕有文化因素的考量;女性研究聚焦性别歧视与刻板印象,却很少触及性选择、性学或荷尔蒙研究(这正是胡文的研究领域)。

尽管哈佛毋庸置疑需要更多政治与思想多元,但将其标为”极左机构”未免言过其实。若以《红报》调查为凭,绝大多数教师的立场都在”极为自由派”右侧;校内亦有阿德里安·韦梅尤尔(Adrian Vermeule)、格雷格·曼昆(Greg Mankiw)等知名保守派教授。多年热门本科课程,多由保守派或新自由主义者教授的主流经济学导论领先,而立足中立的概率论、计算机科学及生命科学入门课程亦广受欢迎。

当然,也有诸如”酷儿民族志”(Queer Ethnography)、”去殖民视角”(Decolonizing the Gaze)这样的课程,但它们往往为选修小众”精品课”,招生人数有限。我的一位学生开发了基于人工智能的”觉醒度量仪”(Woke-o-Meter),它扫描课程描述中诸如”异性恋霸权””交叉性””系统性种族主义””晚期资本主义””解构”等术语,据估算,这类课程在文理学院2025–26年目录中的5,000门课程中约占3%,通识教育课程中约占6%(但其中约三分之一带有左倾倾向)。更多典型课程包括《神经元功能的细胞基础》(Cellular Basis of Neuronal Function)、《德语入门(强化)》(Beginning German (Intensive))和《罗马帝国的衰亡》(The Fall of the Roman Empire)。

若论”哈佛教学生憎恨自由市场”,我们做得并不成功:最受欢迎的本科专业是经济学和计算机科学,半数毕业生毕业后径赴金融、咨询与科技行业。

如何在大学中实现观点多元化,这确实是一道难题,也是我们委员会长期关注的问题。当然,并非所有观点都应得到同等重视——思想的宇宙浩瀚无垠,许多荒谬的理论,如占星术、地平说或大屠杀否认论,根本不值得认真对待。特朗普政府要求审查哈佛的多元化项目,并强迫其确保持不同政见者达到政府认可的”关键人数”(critical mass),这不仅损害大学,也侵蚀民主本身:如果遵照这一标准,生物系就得聘请创世论者,医学院必须录取疫苗怀疑论者,历史系则要容纳否认2020年选举结果的人士。哈佛对此别无选择,只能坚决拒绝,却也意外地成为了一种民间英雄。

但大学不能继续视问题于不见。尽管它们热衷于关注”隐性种族主义””隐性性别歧视”,却对最强大的认知扭曲——”我方偏见”(myside bias)——视若无睹:我们都倾向于轻信自身或所属文化的信念。大学应设定期望:教员进入教室前,先放下个人政治立场;并倡导认知谦逊(epistemic humility)与积极开放心态(active open-mindedness)。在此基础上,对保守派施以”小小”的多元化关怀,并无不妥。正如经济学家琼·罗宾逊(Joan Robinson)所言:”意识形态如呼吸,你永远闻不到自己的那股味道。”

对哈佛最令人痛心的指控莫过于”反犹主义”——这里指的并非历史上美国传统精英群体(即白人盎格鲁-撒克逊新教徒,WASP)对犹太人的排斥情绪,而是一种反以色列热情的外溢效应。一份期待已久的报告详细列举了许多令人不安的事件:犹太学生感到反以色列的抗议活动带来了恐吓,课堂和校园典礼遭到干扰,而校方的反应却迟缓消极;一些教职员工毫无必要地将亲巴勒斯坦的政治立场融入教学或校园活动中;许多犹太学生,尤其是来自以色列的学生,反映自己在校园中遭受同学的孤立乃至妖魔化对待。

和其他问题一样,对于哈佛的反犹指控也需要保持一定的分辨力。确实,这些问题是真实存在的;但如果把哈佛描绘成一个”以摧毁犹太人为手段、进而摧毁西方文明”的堡垒,那就是彻头彻尾的非黑即白思维。

2023年10月7日事件发生后,34个学生组织发表声明,将那场屠杀的全部责任归咎于以色列;对此,超过400名哈佛教职员工联名签署公开信表示反对;一个新成立的”哈佛支持以色列教员联盟”(Harvard Faculty for Israel)也已经吸纳了450名成员。哈佛目前开设有60多门与犹太主题相关的课程,其中包括8门意第绪语(Yiddish)课程。而那份长达300页、梳理了过去一个世纪所有相关事件的反犹主义报告,详尽记录了每一起可查的墙上涂鸦和社交媒体帖子,却没有发现任何将”摧毁犹太人”作为目标的证据,更不用说这会是”校园主流观点”了。

就我个人二十多年的教学生涯而言,无论是我自己,还是其他知名的犹太教员,都未曾真正遭遇过反犹主义的攻击。正如哈佛大四学生雅各布·米勒(Jacob Miller)在《哈佛深红报》(Harvard Crimson)的一篇评论中所说:听到”每四名犹太学生中就有一人感到’身体上不安全'”这样的说法,作为一个每天都自豪地戴着基帕(kippah)在校园里行走的人,难以信服。把所有针对以色列的批评都简单地归为”反犹主义”,实际上是屈服于那种”只有群体间的仇恨才值得谴责”的批判性社会正义逻辑。如果批评者不去直接反驳反以立场所包含的暴力倾向和历史盲区,反而热衷于贴上”反犹”标签,最终只会陷入无休止的语义争论而毫无实际意义。

哈佛的反犹报告提出了诸多切实可行的改革建议——这正是关键:负责任的人在面对复杂机构的问题时,会先识别缺陷,再付诸补救。

已有举措:严格执行现行规定,防止抗议表达越过界限,避免从意见表达沦为骚扰、胁迫。

另一项显而易见的对策是更均衡地应用学术卓越标准。哈佛拥有近400个研究所、中心与项目,这些机构与学术部门不同。有少数被激进讲师所”劫持”,实质成了”反以研究中心”;与此同时,哈佛在以色列研究、中东冲突与反犹研究方面的专职教授却寥寥无几。报告建议加强对此类学科的教授与院系领导监督。

哈佛无法监管学生的私生活或匿名社交媒体发言(那些平台上出现了最恶毒的反犹言论),但学校可以执行其反对基于宗教、国籍和政治信仰的歧视规定,并对诸如助教取消课程让学生参加抗议等明显渎职行为施以惩戒。学校可将反犹与反种族歧视视为同等严重,并在学生踏入哈佛校园之初,明确他们应以尊重与开放心态对待彼此。

同样显而易见不会奏效的是:特朗普政府对哈佛科研经费的惩罚性切断。联邦拨款并非对大学的施舍,也非行政部门的”恩赐”,而是对国家利益重大研究项目的一种酬金——在激烈竞争评审后授予研究者,用于支付项目所需的人力与设备,否则那些研究根本无法进行。

特朗普政府的这一掐断,将比任何以往政府更严重地伤害犹太科研人员。许多活跃和怀抱科学梦想的犹太科学家,如今眼睁睁看着实验室关闭、被裁员,或科研生涯被迫暂停。相比之下,路过”全球化巴勒斯坦大起义”(Globalize the Intifada)标语的轻微刺激,要微不足道得多;更糟的后果是,比犹太人数量更多的非犹太科学家,也将被迫目睹他们的研究被掐断,这一事实被解读为”为了支持犹太人而停止研究”。同样遭受损害的还有那些依赖实验性疗法的患者,他们的治疗被迫中断,未来可能因此失去治愈希望。

如果政府真的关心犹太人,那还不如去关注它对大屠杀否认者和希特勒崇拜者所表现出的同情。政府的真正动机其实很明显——是要削弱那些不受行政权力直接控制的公民社会影响力中心。正如J.D.万斯(J.D. Vance)在2021年演讲的标题所说:”大学才是敌人”(”The Universities Are the Enemy”)。

若联邦政府不出手,谁来敦促哈佛自我改进?大学内部确实缺乏有效的反馈与自省机制。企业亏损可以更换CEO,球队连败可以更换教练;但大多数学科缺乏客观的成功指标,仅靠同行评议,容易沦为圈内相互授勋的把戏。

更糟的是,许多高校惩罚批评者,使变革之声无处存活。去年,一位哈佛院长竟公开为这一做法辩护,直到学术自由委员会强烈反对,他的上司才匆忙表态撤回。

然而,依然有办法让”光”照进来:大学可以赋予名义上负责审核各部门和项目的”访问委员会”(visiting committees)更大的实权,避免这些委员会只是被审查对象的摆设或陪审团。校方管理层也应该认真听取校友、捐赠者和媒体提出的合理批评,将其视为理性声音并加以借鉴。哈佛的管理委员会(Harvard Corporation)一直极为低调、鲜少公开露面——以至于2023年,两位成员与学术自由委员会共进晚餐的新闻,竟然成为了《纽约时报》的头条,这也反映出哈佛治理透明度的严重不足。

哈佛近两年来在公众视野中的风波,也许终于促成了一些改革:

* 学校采取了制度中立政策,不再对与自身职能无关的议题随意表态。

* 学校划定了抗议的底线,并将建立集中执法机构,避免不同部门各自为政。

* 文理学院废除了要求求职者提交”多元化声明”的做法,避免将”觉醒言论”当作录用标准;院长并已要求各项目主管定期汇报本单位的观点多元化状况。

* 那些被激进分子劫持、实质成为”反以研究中心”的机构,正在接受调查并更换负责人。

* 由校长Alan Garber庄重接纳的反犹专题报告,表明了学校对反犹问题的高度重视。

* 学校制定了新的”教室公约”,要求新生入学时即签署,承诺以尊重和开放心态参与课堂讨论。

坦率地说,许多改革恰与特朗普政府的要求时间上重叠;但如果你在暴雨中打起伞,却因那把伞是”特朗普的”就要摘下,那你将自食其果。出于正当理由的改进,才是大学重回正轨、赢回公众信任的正确之道。

大学的最高使命——发现与传承知识——不应因学生情绪、媒体舆论或政治压力而动摇。追求知识不是教授们的特权,而是人类获得真理的唯一途径。不同理念的争论应通过分析和论证来解决,而不是互相指责或陷入受害者心态。抗议可以用来表达和传递共识,但不应成为压制异见或胁迫学校的手段。校园属于整个学术共同体,任何一方都无权将其据为己有。捐赠基金不是社论平台,而是学校肩负着为后代守护的信托资产。

哈佛的贡献与价值,不仅体现在其实用成就上,还体现在思想的奇观:

* 52位诺贝尔奖得主、超过5,800项专利;

* 发明了发酵粉、首例器官移植、可编程计算机、除颤器、梅毒检测以及拯救数千万生命的口服补液疗法;

* 提出核稳定性理论,助力避免核末日;

* 发明了高尔夫球座与捕手面罩;

* 诞生了《芝麻街》(Sesame Street)、《国家讽刺》(The National Lampoon)、《辛普森一家》(The Simpsons)、微软(Microsoft)与脸书(Facebook)。

当下,哈佛的研究依然走在前沿:甲烷追踪卫星、机器人导管、下一代电池、中风康复可穿戴机器人;联邦资助的项目涵盖癌症转移、肿瘤抑制、儿童放疗与化疗、多重耐药感染、流行病预防、痴呆研究、麻醉技术、消防与军事毒性防护、太空飞行生理学与战地创伤护理;哈佛的科学家还在量子计算、人工智能、纳米材料、生物力学、可折叠军事桥梁、防黑客网络和老年智能居住环境等领域不断创新;更有实验室或已研发出潜在的1型糖尿病治愈方案。

哈佛之价值,不仅在于实用成果,更在于思想的幻境花园:了解同僚的研究成果总令人欣喜;翻看课程目录,总让人羡慕当年18岁的求知热情。

* 从人类化石提取的DNA揭示印欧语系的起源;

* 格林童话中那些谋杀、杀婴、食人和乱伦,映照了人类对恐怖的永恒迷恋;

* 同一大脑网络既承载记忆,也支撑白日梦;

* 非暴力抗争往往比暴力手段更为成功;

* 怀孕并发症源于母体与胎儿之间的达尔文式博弈;

* 犹太祷文”谁能如你?”(”Who is like you?”)暗示古代以色列人对一神论的矛盾心态。

如果你仍然对”为什么要支持大学”感到疑惑,不妨问问自己:每年因癌症去世的儿童人数,真的是你所能接受的吗?你对自己患阿尔茨海默症的风险感到满意吗?你对政府哪些政策真正有效、哪些其实是浪费已经有了完全清晰的判断吗?在当前的能源技术下,你真的能对气候的未来感到放心吗?

正如物理学家大卫·德伊奇(David Deutsch)在《无限的起点》(”The Beginning of Infinity”)中所写:”凡不违反自然法则的事,只要掌握正确的知识,皆可实现。”摧毁培养与传承知识的机构,是对未来世代的重大罪行。

 

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英文全文

Harvard Derangement Syndrome

By Steven Pinker

May 23, 2025

In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes.

So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”

And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”

This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status.

Call it Harvard Derangement Syndrome. As the country’s oldest, richest and most famous university, Harvard has always attracted outsize attention. In the public imagination the university is both the epitome of higher learning and a natural magnet for grievances against elites.

Psychologists have identified a symptom called “splitting,” a form of black-and-white thinking in which patients cannot conceive of a person in their lives other than as either an exalted angel or an odious evildoer. They generally treat it with dialectical behavior therapy, advising something like: Most people are a mix of strengths and flaws. Seeing them as all bad might not help in the long run. It’s uncomfortable when others disappoint us. How could you make space for the discomfort without letting it define your whole view of them?

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.

How did Harvard become such a tempting target? Some of the ire is unavoidable, a consequence of its very nature.

Harvard is huge: It has 25,000 students taught by 2,400 faculty members, spread out over 13 schools (including business and dentistry). Inevitably, these multitudes will include some eccentrics and troublemakers, and today their antics can go viral. People are vulnerable to the availability bias, in which a memorable anecdote lodges in their brains and inflates their subjective estimate of its prevalence. One loudmouth lefty becomes a Maoist indoctrination camp.

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.

Harvard, too, is not a monastic order but part of a global network. Most of our graduate students and faculty members were trained elsewhere and go to the same conferences and read the same publications as everyone else in academia. Despite Harvard’s conceit of specialness, just about everything that happens here may be found at other research-intensive universities.

Finally, our students are not blank slates which we can inscribe at will. Young people are shaped by peers more than most people realize. Students are shaped by the peer cultures in their high schools, at Harvard and (especially with social media) in the world. In many cases, students’ politics are no more attributable to indoctrination by professors than are their green hair and pierced septums.

Yet some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned. My colleagues and I have worried for years about the erosion of academic freedom here, exemplified by some notorious persecutions. In 2021 the biologist Carole Hooven was demonized and ostracized, effectively driving her out of Harvard, for explaining in an interview how biology defines male and female. Her cancellation was the last straw that led us to create the academic freedom council, but it was neither the first nor the last.

The epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele was forced to grovel in “restorative justice” sessions when someone discovered that he had co-signed an amicus brief in the 2015 Supreme Court case arguing against same-sex marriage. A class by the bioengineer Kit Parker on evaluating crime prevention programs was quashed after students found it “disturbing.” The legal scholar Ronald Sullivan was dismissed as faculty dean of a residential house when his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein made students feel “unsafe.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression tallies such incidents, and in the past two years ranked Harvard last in free speech among some 250 surveyed colleges and universities.

These cancellations are not just injustices against individuals. Honest scholarly inquiry is difficult if researchers constantly have to watch their backs lest a professional remark expose them to character assassination, or if a conservative opinion is treated as a crime. In the Sullivan case, the university abdicated its responsibility to educate mature citizens by indulging its students’ emotions rather than teaching them about the Sixth Amendment and the difference between mob justice and the rule of law.

But a woke madrasa? This is black-and-white splitting, in need of behavior therapy. Simply enumerating cancellations, especially at a large and conspicuous institution like Harvard, can overshadow the vastly greater number of times that heterodox opinions are voiced without anyone making a fuss. As troubled as I am by assaults on academic freedom at Harvard, the last-place finish does not pass the smell test.

I’ll start with myself. During my decades at the university I’ve taught many controversial ideas, including the reality of sex differences, the heritability of intelligence and the evolutionary roots of violence (while inviting my students to disagree, as long as they provide reasons). I claim no courage: The result has been zero protests, several university honors and warm relations with every chair, dean and president.

Most of my colleagues, too, follow the data and report what their findings indicate or show, however politically incorrect. A few examples: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racism has been in decline. Phonics is essential to reading instruction. Trigger warnings can do more harm than good. Africans were active in the slave trade. Educational attainment is partly in the genes. Cracking down on drugs has benefits, and legalizing them has harms. Markets can make people fairer and more generous. For all the headlines, day-to-day life at Harvard consists of publishing ideas without fear or favor.

Another area in which Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine, but seeing it as all bad does not help in the long run, is viewpoint diversity. According to a 2023 survey in The Harvard Crimson, 45 percent of members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences identified their politics as “liberal,” 32 percent as “very liberal,” 20 percent as “moderate” and only 3 percent as “conservative” or “very conservative.” (The survey did not include the option “woke Radical Left idiot birdbrain.”) FIRE’s estimate of conservative faculty members is slightly higher, at 6 percent.

A university need not be a representative democracy, but too little political diversity can compromise its mission. In 2015 a team of social scientists showed how a liberal monoculture had steered their field into scientific errors, such as prematurely concluding that liberals are less prejudiced than conservatives because they had tested for prejudice against African Americans and Muslims but not against evangelicals.

A poll of my colleagues on the academic freedom council turned up many examples in which they felt political narrowness had skewed research in their specialties. In climate policy, it led to a focus on demonizing fossil fuel companies rather than acknowledging the universal desire for abundant energy; in pediatrics, taking all adolescents’ reported gender dysphoria at face value; in public health, advocating maximalist government interventions rather than cost-benefit analyses; in history, emphasizing the harms of colonialism but not of communism or Islamism; in social science, attributing all group disparities to racism but never to culture; and in women’s studies, permitting the study of sexism and stereotypes but not sexual selection, sexology or hormones (not coincidentally, Hooven’s specialty).

Though Harvard indisputably would profit from more political and intellectual diversity, it is still far from a “radical left institution.” If The Crimson survey is any guide, a sizable majority of faculty across Harvard locate themselves to the right of “very liberal,” and they include dozens of prominent conservatives, like the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule and the economist Greg Mankiw. For years the most popular undergraduate courses have been the introduction to mainstream economics taught by a succession of conservatives and neoliberals, and the resolutely apolitical introductions to probability, computer science and life sciences.

Of course, Harvard also has plenty of offerings like Queer Ethnography and Decolonizing the Gaze, but they tend to be boutique courses with small enrollments. One of my students has developed an artificial-intelligence-based “Woke-o-Meter” that assesses course descriptions for Marxist, postmodernist and critical social justice themes (signaled by terms like “heteronormativity,” “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “late-stage capitalism” and “deconstruction”). He estimates that they make up at most 3 percent of the 5,000 courses in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ 2025-26 course catalog and 6 percent of its larger General Education courses (though about a third of these had a discernible leftward tilt). More typical are offerings like Cellular Basis of Neuronal Function, Beginning German (Intensive) and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

And if Harvard is teaching its students to “despise the free-market system,” we’re not doing a very good job. The most popular undergraduate concentrations are economics and computer science, and half of our graduates march from their commencement ceremony straight into jobs in finance, consulting and technology.

How to achieve an optimal diversity of viewpoints in a university is a difficult problem and an obsession of our council. Of course, not every viewpoint should be represented. The universe of ideas is infinite, and many of them are not worthy of serious attention, such as astrology, flat earthism, and Holocaust denial. The demand of the Trump administration to audit Harvard’s programs for diversity and jawbone a “critical mass” of government-approved contrarians into the noncompliant ones would be poisonous both to the university and to democracy. The biology department could be forced to hire creationists, the medical school vaccine skeptics and the history department denialists of the 2020 election. Harvard had no choice but to reject the ultimatum, becoming an unlikely folk hero in the process.

Still, universities cannot continue to ignore the problem. Though obsessed with implicit racism and sexism, they have been insensitive to the most powerful cognitive distorter of all, the “myside bias” that makes all of us credulous about the cherished beliefs of ourselves or our political or cultural coalitions. Universities should set the expectation that faculty members leave their politics at the classroom door, and affirm the rationalist virtues of epistemic humility and active open-mindedness. To these ends, a bit of D.E.I. for conservatives would not hurt. As the economist Joan Robinson put it, “Ideology is like breath: You never smell your own.”

The most painful indictment of Harvard is its alleged antisemitism — not the old-money WASP snobbery of Oliver Barrett III, but a spillover of anti-Zionist zealotry. A recent, long-awaited report detailed many troubling incidents. Jewish students have felt intimidated by anti-Israel protests that have disrupted classes, ceremonies and everyday campus life, often met with a confused response by the university. Members of the teaching staff have gratuitously injected pro-Palestinian activism into courses or university programming. Many Jewish students, particularly Israelis, reported being ostracized or demonized by their peers.

As with its other maladies, Harvard’s antisemitism has to be considered with a modicum of discernment. Yes, the problems are genuine. But “a bastion of rampant anti-Jew hatred” with the aim of “destroying the Jews as a first step to destroying Western civilization”? Oy gevalt!

In response to the infamous statement by 34 student groups after Oct. 7 holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre, more than 400 Harvard faculty members posted an open letter in protest. A new collective, Harvard Faculty for Israel, has attracted 450 members. Harvard offers more than 60 courses with Jewish themes, including eight Yiddish language courses. And though the 300-page antisemitism report reviews every instance it could find in the past century, down to the last graffito and social media post, it cited no expressions of a goal to “destroy the Jews,” let alone signs that it was the “dominant view on campus.”

For what it’s worth, I have experienced no antisemitism in my two decades at Harvard, and nor have other prominent Jewish faculty members. My own discomfort instead is captured in a Crimson essay by the Harvard senior Jacob Miller, who called the claim that one in four Jewish students feels “physically unsafe” on campus “an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.” The obsession with antisemitism at Harvard represents, ironically, a surrender to the critical-social-justice credo that the only wrong worthy of condemnation is group-against-group bigotry. Instead of directly rebutting the flaws of the anti-Zionist platform, such as its approval of violence against civilians and its historical blind spots, critics have tried to tar it with the sin of antisemitism. But that can devolve into futile semantic disputation about the meaning of the word “antisemitism,” which, our council has argued, can lead to infringements on academic freedom.

Harvard’s antisemitism report has recommended many sensible and overdue reforms, and that’s the point: Responsible people, faced with problems in a complex institution, try to identify the flaws and fix them. Blowing off such efforts as “spraying perfume on a sewer” is unhelpful.

One set has already been adopted: to enforce regulations already on the books that prevent protests from crossing the line from expressions of opinion to campaigns of disruption, coercion and intimidation.

Another no-brainer is to apply standards of scholarly excellence more uniformly. Harvard has almost 400 initiatives, centers and programs, which are distinct from its academic departments. A few were captured by activist lecturers and became, in effect, Centers for Anti-Israel Studies. At the same time, Harvard has a paucity of professors with disinterested expertise in Israel, the Middle East conflict and antisemitism. The report calls for greater professorial and decanal oversight of these subjects.

Harvard can’t police its students’ social lives or social media posts (particularly on anonymous platforms where the vilest antisemitism was expressed). But it can enforce its regulations against discrimination on the basis of religion, national origin and political belief, and against blatant derelictions such as a teaching assistant dismissing sections so students can attend anti-Israel protests. It could treat antisemitism with the same gravity with which it treats racism, and it could set expectations, as soon as students take their first steps into Harvard Yard, that they treat one another with respect and openness to disagreement.

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.

Mr. Trump’s strangling of this support will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.

The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.”

If the federal government doesn’t force Harvard to reform, what will? There are legitimate concerns that universities have weak mechanisms for feedback and self-improvement. A business in the red can fire its chief executive; a losing team can replace its coach. But most academic fields don’t have objective metrics of success and rely instead on peer review, which can amount to professors conferring prestige on one another in self-affirming cliques.

Worse, many universities have punished professors and students who criticize their policies, a recipe for permanent dysfunction. Last year a Harvard dean actually justified this repression until our academic freedom council came down on the idea like a ton of bricks and his boss swiftly disavowed it.

Still, there are ways to let the light get in. Universities could give a stronger mandate to the external “visiting committees” that ostensibly audit departments and programs but in practice are subject to regulatory capture. University leaders constantly get an earful from disgruntled alumni, donors and journalists, and they should use it, judiciously, as a sanity check. The governing boards should be more tuned in to university affairs and take more responsibility for its health. The Harvard Corporation is so reclusive that when two of its members dined with members of the academic freedom council in 2023, The Times deemed it worthy of a news story.

Harvard’s nearly two-year ordeal in the public eye has, perhaps belatedly, prompted many reforms. It has adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, no longer pontificating on issues that don’t affect its own functioning. It has drawn lines on disruptive protests and will create centralized enforcement so that violators can’t jury-shop or count on faculty nullification. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has eliminated the “diversity statements” that vetted job applicants for their willingness to write woke-o-babble, and its dean has called on program directors to report on their units’ viewpoint diversity. The rogue centers are under investigation, and their directors have been replaced. The task force report, solemnly accepted by the university’s president, Alan Garber, shows that antisemitism is being taken seriously. A new classroom compact enjoins students to be open to ideas that challenge their beliefs.

The uncomfortable fact is that many of these reforms followed Mr. Trump’s inauguration and overlap with his demands. But if you’re standing in a downpour and Mr. Trump tells you to put up an umbrella, you shouldn’t refuse just to spite him.

And doing things for good reasons is, I believe, the way for universities to right themselves and regain public trust. It sounds banal, but too often universities have been steered by the desire to placate their students, avoid making enemies and stay out of the headlines. We saw how well that worked out.

Instead, university leaders should be prepared to affirm the paramount goal of a university — discovering and transmitting knowledge — and the principles necessary to pursue it. Universities have a mandate and the expertise to pursue knowledge, not social justice. Intellectual freedom is not a privilege of professors but the only way that fallible humans gain knowledge. Disagreements should be negotiated with analysis and argument, not recriminations of bigotry and victimhood. Protests may be used to generate common knowledge of a grievance, but not to shut people up or coerce the university into doing what the protesters want. The university commons belongs to the community, whose members may legitimately disagree with one another, and it may not be usurped by one faction. The endowment is not an op-ed page but a treasure that the university is obligated to hold in trust for future generations.

Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon. They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.

Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Practical applications are not the only things that make Harvard precious. It is a phantasmagoria of ideas, a Disneyland of the mind. Learning about my colleagues’ research is a source of endless delight, and when I look at our course catalog, I wish I were 18 again. DNA extracted from human fossils reveals the origin of the Indo-European languages. Grimm’s fairy tales, with their murder, infanticide, cannibalism and incest, reveal our eternal fascination with the morbid. A single network in the brain underlies remembering the past and daydreaming about the future. Nonviolent resistance movements are more successful than violent ones. The ailments of pregnancy come from a Darwinian struggle between mother and fetus. The “Who is like you?” prayer in the Jewish liturgy suggests that the ancient Israelites were ambivalent about their monotheism.

And if you’re still skeptical that universities are worth supporting, consider these questions: Do you think that the number of children who die every year from cancer is just about right? Are you content with your current chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Do you feel our current understanding of which government policies are effective and which ones are wasteful is perfect? Are you happy with the way the climate is going, given our current energy technology?

In his manifesto for progress, “The Beginning of Infinity,” the physicist David Deutsch wrote, “Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge.” To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.

 

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of the forthcoming book “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows … : Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”

2025/5/24

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