Word: pinker
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world. It's not surprising that we sheathe our words in politeness and innuendo and other forms of doublespeak. FROM THE STUFF OF THOUGHT BY STEVEN PINKER...
Some, however, were not so sanguine, and in the person of Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker they found an advocate to express their anxiety about the role of religion, particularly under the category of “Faith and Reason” in a required undergraduate curriculum. Old hostilities to religion as a legitimate area of inquiry were aroused, as was the specter of sinister creationists and out-of-the-closet Jesuits. It was bad enough to have a large and visible chapel here, but to give faith and reason a place in a curriculum long ceded to scientism...
...addressing the final lecture of Psychology 1002, “Morality and Taboo”—a course inspired by the furor that dogged his presidency. Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz, who co-taught the course with Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker, responded, “Well, maybe that was the problem...
...curricular process worked, consider the fate of the Task Force’s “Reason and Faith” proposal. This idea worried some professors who are—justifiably—distressed by the advance of unreason in society. Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker put the issue most plainly: “Universities are about reason, pure and simple.” Faith belongs in churches and temples, not at Harvard...
...Reason and Faith” requirement in the general education curriculum has led to an examination of the place of undergraduates in the study of religion at Harvard. The category came under heavy criticism from some professors such as Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker after it was proposed in October, and the general education task force scrapped the category two months later, arguing that religion courses could be “readily accommodated in other categories...