It starts with the fact that Pinker co-authored the founding announcement of the Council on Academic Freedom, which was printed in the Boston Globe.
Then, in the announcement:
- The second link goes to FIRE, the organization funded by Koch and other right-wing plutocrats. According to Source Watch:
FIRE is a former member of the State Policy Network, a group of right-wing think tanks and other politically-active nonprofits.
FIRE was a sponsor of Turning Point USA's 2017 "Student Action Summit".[6][7]
Connection to Conservative Dark Money Groups, Collaboration with Hate Group Alliance for Defending Freedom
FIRE has received millions of dollars in contributions from politically-active conservative nonprofits, including over $3.4 million from the Charles G. Koch Foundation, over $3.4 million from Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, over $1.8 million from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, over $1.3 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, over $1 million from the Searle Freedom Trust, and over $1 million from the Stand Together Trust.
- The third link goes to Heterodox Academy, an organization funded in part by DonorsTrust, the right-wing plutocrat funding vehicle of choice which also funds the racist obscenity VDARE, the owners of the White Supremacist Castle. Heterodox Academy is headed by "one of Charles Koch's 'pet professors,'" John Tomasi.
- The fourth link goes to FIRE.
- The fifth link goes to an article by Steven Pinker's buddy, pioneer of stochastic terrorism, among other awful things, the Koch-funded Quillette author Cathy Young. Naturally Young's article focuses on Pinker himself.
- The eighth link goes to FIRE.
The membership of the Council on Academic Freedom includes:
- Pinker's fellow Quillette author Jeffrey Flier, co-president
- Carol Hooven, a proponent of sociobiology whom Steven Pinker is apparently mentoring, and who praised neo-Nazi Quillette editor Bo Winegard,
- Laurence Summers, another buddy of Pinker, who also praised Winegard
- Liz Gaufberg - "heterdox humanist" fan of Heterodox Academy and Bret Weinstein.
- David Haig - supporter of Napoleon Chagnon along with Pinker
- Dan Carpenter defends Amy Wax's right to be a public racist troll while a member of an academic institution and mentions FIRE and two other members of this Council, Jeannie Suk Gersen and Janet Halley. I suspect that defending Wax will be an important issue for Harvard's Council on Academic Freedom, given Wax's prominence at Peter Thiel's CPAC for Racists, at which Pinker, and other supporters of race pseudoscience, spoke.
- Joseph Henrich - evolutionary psychologist - predictably Quillette author Rob Henderson wrote a positive review of his book for the Koch-funded City Journal.
- James Hankins - author at Quillette
- Regina E. Herzlinger - Koch employee
- Jilly Hooley - evolutionary psychologist
- Randall Kennedy - co-author at Quillette with Federalist Society contributor Harvey Silverglate
- J. Mark Ramseyer - notorious for suggesting that comfort women were not coerced
- Stephen Sachs - contributor at the Federalist Society
- Richard Zeckhauser - one-time member of the Council of Academic Advisors for the Koch-funded AEI, chair of Quillette author Jason Richwine's dissertation committee
Conservatives are so few at American universities that the battle to restore respect for free and open debate will have to be led by what used to be known as traditional liberals. Well, maybe there’s hope. On Wednesday Harvard University said it’s forming a new faculty-led Council on Academic Freedom dedicated to the free exchange of ideas as a cornerstone of “reason and rational discourse.”
We know that Steven Pinker considers agreement with race pseudoscience an indicator of "reason and rational discourse."
Fun fact about Harvard - it has a page on its library site about scientific racism. And meanwhile Steven Pinker is merrily promoting those who promote the same.
