Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Bill Maher’s latest “Real Time” clip argues that we should get rid of the State of the Union Address (coming up Tuesday), at least under Trump. That’s because to Maher it’s ludicrous that Trump keeps appropriating the powers of Congress for himself, violating our Constitutional separation of powers. The speech has become, says Maher, not a summary of how we’re doing, but a series of future Diktats. Congress seems to have become superfluous: a “supporting actor.” In fact, Jefferson didn’t even favor the President speaking to Congress in this way.
Look at these guests: U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Texas State Representative James Talarico (D-TX). Boebert looks like she’s been spending some time in a tanning bed.
As Maher says, the real state of the Union is “hopelessly divided.”
Lordy be, now we have Trump attacking the conservative Supreme Court because it struck down the tariffs he imposed on nearly every country. I am delighted for two reasons. First, because I always said that if anybody is going to stop Trump, it wound have to be the courts, who have now demonstrated some rare unanimity against his nonsense. It heartens me that the Court, right-wing as it is, can still be rational. Second, I have also argued (along with all rational economists) that tariffs are never good, and in the end it is the consumers who suffer.
The 3 dissenters in the vote were Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, with the last two predictable.
So now Trump is frothing at the mouth at the court he though he could count on. And it is the Court of Last Resort. Though he swears he will find a way to circumvent this ruling, I do not think he will. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.
At last, some happy political news. An excerpt, and note that the Chief Justice wrote the opinion, as he can reserve that right for himself:
A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies.
The court, in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, he vowed to restore tariffs using other authority and excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs.”
The ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.
A small but vocal group of Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in celebrating the court’s ruling, reflecting frustration that their branch of government has ceded its authority over trade matters to the White House. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and former longtime party leader, said the ruling left “no room for doubt” that Mr. Trump’s circumventing of Congress was “illegal.”
Trump learned the bad news at a meeting in the White House, when an aide passed him a note as he was answering questions:
The ruling, Mr. Trump said, was a “disgrace.” Speaking to a crowd of governors, cabinet officials and White House aides, the president lashed out at the court but insisted that he had a contingency plan.
He took one more question from Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina, a Democrat, about hurricane assistance, but then ended the meeting early. He wanted to work on his response to the ruling, he said.
For Mr. Trump, the Supreme Court decision was not just a political setback, but a personal one. He has promoted tariffs for decades, and has claimed that his sweeping levies resuscitated the economy and revived American manufacturing.
“Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” he said Thursday at an event in Rome, Ga.
Data released on Thursday showed Mr. Trump’s tariffs were not having the effect he had promised they would. U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit in goods hit a record high. U.S. manufacturers have also cut more than 80,000 jobs in the past year.
The administration does have other laws it can rely on to try to re-enact the tariffs, but those laws have procedural constraints and might not allow tariffs as expansive as those struck down by the court.
The emergency-economic law invoked by Trump “was designed to address national security concerns and so was designed for flexibility and speed,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “Other statutory authorities are not as flexible.”
The president could also seek explicit authorization from Congress to reimpose the sweeping tariffs, though that route appears politically unlikely.
In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.
CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”
But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”
It seems to me, and even more now that I’ve seen the show, that the reasons for taking it off there air were, as Alfonsi claims, not really editorial but political. Why would Weiss do that, though? Perhaps because, she doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Trump, who doesn’t want the information in this show to be aired. There are several reasons why Weiss might have wanted administration pushback. First, the Trump administration approved the acquisition of Paramount (which owns CBS) to Skydance, and, after this, we can’t have CBS criticizing the administration. Second, this year Trump sued CBS for airing an edited interview with Kamala Harris; Trump won and got $16 million. So there’s every reason to think that Trump would be really upset if CBS’s 60 Minutes criticized his administration, which is the show does implicitly. You can see that below.
Nevertheless, a fair number of readers here defended Weiss, arguing that Alfonsi did NOT ask enough U.S. administration officials to criticize the show. 60 Minutes did not, for instance, consult Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and “the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.” Weiss helpfully suggested that they ask Miller. But, as you’ll see in the 14-minute segment, which was aired in Canada, the show did ask for comment from the White House. The response? Here’s what Alfonsi says in the piece:
“The Department of Homeland Sexurity declined our request for an interview, and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request.”
Now isn’t that enough asking? After all, the show asked the proper government agency to respond. That agency, DHS, referred CBS to the El Salvadorian government, which didn’t respond. That is two asks, and to the right people. Isn’t that enough? How many bits of investigative journalism have you read that end with something like, “We asked X for a comment on this story, but we have gotten no response.” Do you beef about them not having asked more people, up until they get a critical response? No, I doubt it. And the editors of this story were satisfied with that, as am I. Weiss’s insistence that CBS keep asking people until someone in the Trump administration did respond critically constitutes micromanagement, and I fail to understand that this is justifiable grounds for pulling the story.
Before I make a few more comments, why don’t you watch the show? The links to the Canadian broadcast, apparently identical to the American one, are below, as “The Streisand Effect” has spread them all over the Inbternet.
First, from The Breakdown. I’ve put the links to that site here, and you can watch the Canadian version by clicking on the headline below. The quality isn’t great, but you can certainly see the show. It’s about the right length for a “60 Minutes” segment, being 14 minutes long (most are between 12 and 15 minutes). The site’s comment:
The segment apparently aired on Canada’s Global TV app and was shared by this Bluesky user @jasonparis.bsky.social. You can watch the entire segment below!
On The Reset, Yashar Ali also has a link to the full video; click below to access it (h/t reader Dave). THIS IS THE BEST AVAILABLE VERSION. That site says this:
The decision to pull the story was made by CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, and it triggered a firestorm within the network and, subsequently, in the public. Here’s some info on the controversy and when I update this story shortly, I will link to additional reporting, but I wanted to publish this video immediately as a version of it was taken down on YouTube.
It turns out that the network delivered the segment to Canada’s Global TV app (it has since been pulled).
As I understand it, this is only part of the overall story, but this 13-minute-long video— sent to me by a source —is what exists. [JAC: I have no idea what they mean by “part of the overall story”. If something more was there, I’d like to know what it is.]
(An earlier version of this story had a video that was filmed with someone’s smart phone, this is a broadcast quality version),
Click the screenshot below to access the video, scrolling down a bit after you get to the site:
There’s also a YouTube version embedded within a MayDay discussion. The CBS segment goes from 4:49 to 15:20, so it’s shorter than other versions. I have not checked to see what, if anything, is missing from the video below compared to those above.
Finally, this Bluesky post begins a series of five shorter posts that contain the segment. Again, I haven’t checked this one to see if it’s “complete,” at least compared to the first two above:
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
So, what have we here? The piece is mostly about Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration from the U.S. to a horrible prison (CECOT) in El Salvador. The purported reason was that they were terrorists or violent criminals. Most of the video is taken up with shots of the prison and interviews with Venezuelans who had been deported to CECOT and later sent on to Venezuela (and presumably freed there) in a prisoner swap.
CECOT is hell on earth, far worse than the Supermax prisons in the U.S. The lights are on 24 hours per day, cells are overcrowded, there is no outside light or fresh water (prisoners say they drank water from toilets), the food is dire, and the El Salvadoran prisoners (presumably gang members) in CECOT will never get out again. They are treated like trash, and manhandled and beaten regularly. It is surely hell on earth.
Note that the people interviewed by 60 Minutes are not El Salvadoran gang members, but some of 252 Venezuelans who entered the U.S. illegally and were deemed suitable for sending to CECOT
CECOT, or Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, was constructed three years ago. Wikipedia adds this:
With a capacity for 40,000inmates, CECOT is the largest prison in Latin America and one of the largest in the world by prisoner capacity. In March 2025, the Salvadoran government accepted over 200deportees that the second Donald Trump administration alleged were Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members and incarcerated them in CECOT. Among them was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case received widespread media attention in the United States. The Venezuelans incarcerated in CECOT were repatriated to Venezuela in July 2025 following a prisoner swap involving El Salvador, the United States, and Venezuela.
According to the 60 Minutes report, the U.S. paid El Salvador $4.7 million to house Venezuelan deportees, characterizing them as “heninous monsters: rapists, kidnappers, sexual assaulter, and predators”, and “the worst of the worst.” Were they? Human Rights Watch, quoted in the show, concluded that nearly of the Venezuelans sent to CCECOT “had no criminal history” save illegal entry into the U.S. They add that only 8 prisoners, or 3.1%, “were convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.”
But surely none of these prisoners deserve this kind of punishment, even if they were murderers! Yet the vast majority were guilty of no crimes save illegal entry. ICE’s own records were consulted and reviewed by 60 Minutes. Even having a tattoo was apparently sufficient reason to warrant a Venezuelan’s deportation to CECOT, but tattooes aren’t reliable ways to identify Venezuelan gang members. And don’t even ask about “the island”: a punishment cell in which prisoners were beaten every half hour. You may have seen the “commercial” with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (the department asked for comments!), showing a group of heavily tattooes prisoners, actually shows El Salvadoran prisoners accused of being gang members, not Venezuelans deported by the U.S. Here’s an AP video of Noem’s visit. The prisoners shown are El Salvadoran, most with tattooes indicating gang membership. But remember, even these baddies to not deserve to be in such hell.
The show then interviews a group of students at U. C. Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. These students investigated the prison and verified that the deportees’ stories were true and that the conditions for all prisoners “violated UN minimum standards for prisoners,” constituting violations of human rights.
Yes, there are two sides for every story, but I can’t see another side of this one: a side that vindicates what the Trump Administration did. But have a look for yourself (I recommend the second link, the one from Reset). What is the other side?
It seems to me that Weiss was micromanaging this video on ideological grounds, presumably to soften its implicit attack on the Trump administration. Taking this segment off the air because they didn’t ask the Administration for enough comments appears to me as dissimulation.
As I’ve mentioned, one could describe the situation in Los Angeles a “shitshow” or a “dumpster fire”. My take about what happened is that ICE (or other law enforcement officials) went to arrest undocumented immigrants in L.A., but were blocked or impeded by huge protests by American civilians. Both protestors and law enforcement officials were masked: the former, along with the vandalism and violence, shows that the protestors were not committing classical civil disobedience, but didn’t want to be identified; the latter seems unconscionable because law enforcement should not be masked, and should be identifiable. Yes, many demonstrators remained peaceful, but there’s no doubt that there was violence along with attempts to kill or injure law enforcement.
The violence involved protestors setting cars on fire, looting, and worse, firing serious fireworks (Roman candles and M80s) at law enforcement. I don’t think law enforcement provoked these protests, but they did respond with tear gas and flashbangs. At this point, despite the objections of California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump deputized the California National Guard to intervene and protect law enforcement. 4,000 National Guard people were involved, though it’s not clear what, exactly they did. Nevertheless, Newsom has filed a lawsuit against Trump for calling in the Guard.
The use of both National Guard and Marines has been widely condemned by the media, especially the progressive or left-wing media. For example, the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg has an op-ed today, “This is what autocracy looks like.” A few quotes:
Since Donald Trump was elected again, I’ve feared one scenario above all others: that he’d call out the military against people protesting his mass deportations, putting America on the road to martial law. Even in my more outlandish imaginings, however, I thought that he’d need more of a pretext to put troops on the streets of an American city — against the wishes of its mayor and governor — than the relatively small protests that broke out in Los Angeles last week.
In a post-reality environment, it turns out, the president didn’t need to wait for a crisis to launch an authoritarian crackdown. Instead, he can simply invent one.
It’s true that some of those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles have been violent; on Sunday one man was arrested for allegedly tossing a Molotov cocktail at a police officer, and another was accused of driving a motorcycle into a line of cops. Such violence should be condemned both because it’s immoral and because it’s wildly counterproductive; each burning Waymo or smashed storefront is an in-kind gift to the administration.
But the idea that Trump needed to put soldiers on the streets of the city because riots were spinning out of control is pure fantasy. “Today, demonstrations across the city of Los Angeles remained peaceful, and we commend all those who exercised their First Amendment rights responsibly,” said a statement issued by the Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday evening. That was the same day Trump overrode Gov. Gavin Newsom and federalized California’s National Guard, under a rarely used law meant to deal with “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.”
Then, on Monday, with thousands of National Guard troops already deployed to the city, the administration said it was also sending 700 Marines. The Los Angeles police don’t seem to want the Marines there; in a statement, the police chief, Jim McDonnell, said, “The arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.” But for Trump, safeguarding the city was never the point.
It’s important to understand that for this administration, protests needn’t be violent to be considered an illegitimate uprising. The presidential memorandum calling out the National Guard refers to both violent acts and any protests that “inhibit” law enforcement. That definition would seem to include peaceful demonstrations around the site of ICE raids. In May, for example, armed federal agents stormed two popular Italian restaurants in San Diego looking for undocumented workers; they handcuffed staff members and took four people into custody. As they did so, an outraged crowd gathered outside, chanting “shame” and for a time blocking the agents from leaving. Under Trump’s order, the military could target these people as insurrectionists.
Clearly Goldberg sees calling out both the National Guard and the Marines as a odious step towards an imposition of autocracy in America. I won’t comment on the above but ask readers to respond to the situation. Here are some questions:
1.) Should ICE (or whoever started arrested immigrants) have even gone after the people, even if they were undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally?
2.) Should law enforcement wear masks?
3.) Is this an example of civil disobedience, violent protest, or both?
4.) Given the violence, was it still necessary (or even useful) to call out the National Guard?
5.) Should the Marines have been called out?
finally
6.) What would you do in this situation if you were President (or governor)?
Trump continues to go after Harvard, ostensibly because of its pervasive antisemitism (granted, President Alan Garber says that the climate is still antisemitic and he himself has been a victim). However, Trump is punishing the wrong people for Harvard’s presumed crimes, and those include researchers whose grants have been cut or rescinded.
Now he’s taken an even more egregious step: threatening to ban the school’s ability to accept international students unless it coughs up a pile of information about all of Harvard’s foreign students. Click the headline from April 17 below to read, or find the article archived here:
An excerpt:
The Trump administration on Thursday said it would halt Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation of the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.
The administration notified Harvard about the decision — which could affect about a quarter of the school’s student body — after a back-and-forth in recent weeks over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The latest move intensifies the administration’s attempt to upend the culture of higher education by directly subverting the ability of one of the nation’s premier universities to attract the best and brightest students from all over the world. That capability, across all of academia, has long been one of the greatest sources of academic, economic and scientific strength in America.
It is also likely to prompt a second legal challenge from Harvard, according to another person familiar with the school’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The university sued the Trump administration last month over the government’s attempt to impose changes to its curriculum, admissions policies and hiring practices.
“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” a letter to the university from Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.
The Department of Homeland Security said the action applied to current and future students.
“Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the department said in a news release after Ms. Noem posted the administration’s letter on social media later on Thursday.
Not only that, but current foreign students have to find another place to study, pronto. Do you think that’s easy? And of course Trump has a way to enforce this plan: all he has to do is revoke the visas of foreign students.
Granted, a lot of dosh is involved, as foreign students tend to pay full fare:
The administration’s decision is likely to have a significant effect on the university’s bottom line. Tuition at Harvard is $59,320 for the 2025-26 school year, and costs can rise to nearly $87,000 when room and board are included. International students tend to pay larger shares of education costs compared with other students. (Harvard notes it is need-blind for all students, regardless of nationality.)
You can read the letter from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem here, which lays out what Harvard has to cough up to prevent loss of its foreign students. It was apparently sent to the school
I don’t think Harvard responded by the April 30 deadline, and they have responded this way:
Harvard relayed those concerns to the administration on April 30. On the same day, the university’s executive vice president, Meredith Weenick, issued a public letter that vowed the school would provide the administration only with information “required by law” and urged students to “stay as focused as possible on your academic pursuits.”
The administration responded the following week, notifying Harvard that the school’s response did not satisfy Ms. Noem’s request, the people said. In the same message, the administration appeared to narrow its request by asking for information on international students who met any one of four criteria.
Noem then disqualified Harvard from the student visa program. I have just learned that Harvard has filed a lawsuit over this latest action and has filed a restraining order against the government (you can read the new suit here). I haven’t read it yet, and though I’m not a lawyer, I think the university has a good case. Harvard is being singled out among all American universities in this way (some are even more antisemitic than Harvard) and the government’s dismissing of foreign applicants has never been done before. I’m not sure whether selective enforcement is grounds to sue, but you can be sure that Harvard will mount a case.
One quarter of Harvard’s students are foreign, and they are essential to Harvard being Harvard. Further, it’s inimical to scholarship to prevent students who want to study at Harvard from coming here, denying the world the ability to send people to an American university renowned for producing brilliant foreign scholars.
This morning, Steve Pinker published a long op-ed in the NYT on the “Harvard derangement syndrome” of the administration. Click on the headline below to read it, or find it archived here:
An excerpt (Steve first mentions all the pieces he’s written criticizing Harvard):
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 forbade Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as 15-fold, 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.
He admits that Harvard still has problems:
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 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!
I’m glad there’s some Yiddish in there. He notes that withholding grant money hurts Jews than other groups, and is hypocritical given Trump’s past statements:
Just as clear is what won’twork: 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.”
Indeed. It’s natural that a populist and delusional President will go after America’s most elite university.
. . . . 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.
Pinker feels that Harvard is capable of reforming itself, and in fact is now doing so. But even if some of the reforms coincide with those demanded by the Trump administration, it’s simply bad for the government to mold universities to its liking. Withholding grants and revoking the visas of foreign students will not cure Harvard of antisemitism.
“Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”
Read the whole op-ed, written with Pinker’s typical panache; he concludes that, for Harvard, 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.” Sadly, Trump has already wielded the knife.
As someone interested in history, I am both interested and wary when analogies are drawn among different periods and events in history, especially applying the past to the present day. And, as another prelude, I should note that I have said here before at WEIT that Bret Stephens is wrong about most things. But when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s right about yesterday’s cringe-inducing display of depravity by the erstwhile leaders of the free world, the President and Vice President of the United States. [JAC: You can find Stephens’s piece archived here.] I found Stephens’ historical analogy to the pre-Pearl Harbor meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which led to the Atlantic Charter, whose principles include that there should be “no aggrandizement, territorial or other” and that “sovereign rights and self-government [shall be] restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”, very clarifying. Money quote:
If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky.
