First, Do No Harm

Last Friday, Steven Pinker, who is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, wrote a long – very long – opinion article for the New York Times, about the attacks by the Trump administration on the school.  He looked at the issue, in part, from the perspective of a psychologist, calling the attacks related to a “Harvard Derangement Syndrome,” and noted, as well, “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.”
 
To show his fairness on the subject, Prof. Pinker opened his analysis by presenting his bona fides criticizing his school, providing a laundry list of articles he’s written that have taken Harvard to task.  So, he has, indeed, been very fair-minded. 
 
He is also, in this article, monumentally misguided.  And just utterly horrible at his sense of timing.
 
In his effort to be seen as fair, Dr. Pinker offsets his defense of Harvard by sprinkling throughout his long (very long) article such comments as “Yet some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned.”  And “Another area in which Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine, but seeing it as all bad does not help in the long run…”  And “Though Harvard indisputably would profit from more political and intellectual diversity…”
 
Steven Pinker is described on his Wikipedia page as “a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.”  Dr. Pinker is a very bright man, who writes here in scholarly detail and at great length about Harvard strengths and just as pointedly about its flaws.  I hesitate to say “thoughtfully,” though, because (while it attempts to be that and succeeds on the surface) it totally misses the forest for the handful of flowers.
 
What he misses is that none of the attacks against Harvard by Trump and those echoing him are about whether Harvard would profit from more political and intellectual diversity.  Or whether Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine.  Or how much of the enmity against Harvard has been earned.  The attacks are because Trump and MAGOPs hate Harvard.  Because it’s Harvard.  If Harvard had no flaws, they would hate Harvard.
 
Trump is presenting himself in his attacks against Harvard as a Great Defender of Jews Against Anti-Semitism.  The very last thing anyone needs is Trump as a defender against Anti-Semitism.  Trump is arguably (bordering on inarguably) the most Anti-Semitic president the United States has had since the start of the 20th Century.  Perhaps ever, but my awareness doesn’t stretch back that far, so I won't make the claim.  The only time that we know of Trump ever defending anything Jewish is when he stated that he only wanted Jews doing his financial books, because he has an anti-Semitic stereotype they’re all good with money.  And for his MAGOP acolytes and enablers to also huddle close to him in their own supposed defense of Jews against anti-Semitism transcends pathetic and repugnant, since they and much of the Republican Party for well-over the past half-century has been in the forefront of promoting anti-Semitism.  Consider:
 
When the base of your party is Christian evangelicals, and when the reason that base supports Israel fervently is because of the Rapture – the epochal event when all believers in Jesus as the Savior will be brought to Israel and rise up in the air to be with Jesus, and non-believers (which, of course, includes all Jews, unless they convert) will be engulfed in flames to burn and cleanse the old world, marking the End Times – then trying to present yourself and your party as being the great defenders of Jews against anti-Semitism is a combination of mass self-delusion, soulless hypocrisy, and running an eternal flim-flammery con game.
 
Keep in mind that when Trump's words and actions signaled to his MAGOP base that it was okay to smear and attack minorities, all such attacks went up, and anti-Semitic attacks against Jews went up significantly.
 
Keep in mind that Trump – while trying to position himself as wanting to protect Jews from anti-Semitism – is the same venal anti-Semite who for the past eight years has relentlessly and publicly tried to define to Jews who Jews are, and that if they didn’t support him, then they weren’t real Jews.
 
The last thing anyone Jewish  --  or anyone who has even simply heard of Jews, or for that matter, has just seen a bagel -- needs is Trump telling them anything (anything!!) about being Jewish.  Then and now and ever in the future.  I’m not sure if an exorcism would even be able to redeem Trump from his anti-Semitism.  It may be too ingrained in him.  
 
And Trump is trying to scam the public into thinking that he is trying to destroy Harvard all and only because he wants to defend and protect Jews!!!

By the way, if Trump himself truly believed what he is trying to say about how actual anti-Semitism is disqualifying, then he would resign from office.
 
Trump doesn’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.  His Attorney General and DHS Secretary pushing his efforts don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.  His spokespeople don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews. His loyalists don’t care about anti-Semitism and protecting Jews.
 
Trump hates Harvard.  Because it’s Harvard.  And anyone who even just tries to figure out Trump’s "thinking" of why is on a fool’s errand that risks getting them sucked deep into Trump’s void.
 
And meanwhile, Dr. Steven Pinker writes a long (monumentally long – so massively long it makes my own articles seem like paragraphs) detailed article of dialectics and “splitting” and earned enmity of Harvard and Harvard shortcomings and how Harvard would profit from more political and intellectual diversity – as if that’s what this is about.
 
Consider:
 
To supposedly defend Jews against anti-Semitism, Trump wants to freeze $2 billion to Harvard meant for medical research and for funding teaching hospitals like Mass General and Boston Children's Hospital, and wants to ban all foreign students, 27% of the student body, from attending Harvard.  Issues that Steven Pinker himself notes.  (And worse, this is before the news just this morning that Trump has issued a new statement that he wants to cut all federal contracts with Harvard and cut an additional $3 billion in funding -- though without explaining where such money would be coming from, since federal contracts with Harvard don't come close to that amount).  Yet while Dr. Pinker bends over backwards so far that he can touch his chin on the ground behind him and while getting himself and his readers lost in the interminable length of his explanations of Harvard’s "earned enmity" and good deeds and all his analysis, he totally misses that Trump and the MAGOPs attack on Harvard is about absolutely none of that.
 
Nor are Trump's assaults against all the other universities he’s attacked and frozen billions of dollars medical research funding from.  Nor is his effort to close the  Department of Education.
 
That’s what this is about.  Trump hates Harvard.  Trump hates elite universities.  Trump hates education.  This is not hyperbole. You need only look at his words and actions.

Further, you need only remember, too, that Harvard is a private university.  This isn't Trump individually trying to control the federal government.  This is Trump wanting to impose his rule, enabled by the acquiescent MAGOPs in Congress, on all institutions, public and private.
 
And Dr. Pinker – in what he thought would be an erudite, well-developed presentation of how we must not conflate some flaws into meaning all flaws and on and on and on and on and on (and on and on) about enmity and splitting and psychological analysis – merely serves to give ammunition to those who hate everything he himself does and stands for by him pointing out all the things Harvard has not done perfectly, just exactly like all humans have not done perfectly, which allows Trump and his MAGOP enablers to justify their hatred and justify their efforts to crush medical research that benefits all mankind and tear apart international outreach for education.

None of which has anything to do with anti-Semitism or protecting Jews.  In fact, what such punitive actions actually hurt most is the government itself and ultimately society, since the billions of frozen research grants for things like heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's is money the federal government not only wants outside facilities to spend, but needs them to because the government doesn't have the ability to do all the research.  So, that the United States can stay the world leader in such development, rather than cede such leadership to other countries, most notably China.
 
At some point in time, a long (very long) article by Prof. Pinker on the strengths and weaknesses about Harvard might be very apt and even valuable.  Unfortunately, this is not that point in time. 
 
Because at this point in time, he totally missed the point.
 
And in missing it, he did himself and his issue a huge disservice.  And harm.