aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Of academic inquiry

Another observation from Steven Pinker in defense of dangerous ideas:

Though academics owe the extraordinary perquisite of tenure to the ideal of encouraging free inquiry and the evaluation of unpopular ideas, all too often academics are the first to try to quash them. The most famous recent example is the outburst of fury and disinformation that resulted when Harvard president Lawrence Summers gave a measured analysis of the multiple causes of women’s underrepresentation in science and math departments in elite universities and tentatively broached the possibility that discrimination and hidden barriers were not the only cause.

From the preface to his forthcoming book What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable. My experience says his observation is spot-on!