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Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said there was a “grain of truth” to President Donald Trump’s argument that Harvard University was a “liberal mess.”
“President Trump has described Harvard as a liberal mess, that it has been hiring almost all woke, radical left idiots and birdbrains,” CBS’ Bill Whitaker asked Pinker during “60 Minutes.” “The language is a bit harsh, but does he have a point here?”
“Not there, no. I do not agree with that. I think there is a grain of a truth,” Pinker said. “I think there should be more voices on the right at Harvard.”
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US-Canadian author and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker poses in Paris on Nov. 5, 2021. (Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images)
The Trump administration has taken aim at elite universities over antisemitism. Trump slashed more than $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard earlier this year due to its failure to comply with the recommendations of a federal antisemitism task force. A judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to slash funding in September.
Pinker added that he didn’t think Trump should be the one determining whose voices are acceptable.
Whitaker asked Pinker where he believed Harvard had gone wrong.
“I think there have been too many incidents in which someone has expressed a controversial opinion and has been shamed or canceled,” Pinker said.
Harvard University did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One for his departure to South Korea, at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, on Oct. 29, 2025. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Pool/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He specifically pointed to former Harvard professor Carole Hooven, who previously taught the “Hormones and Behavior” human evolutionary biology course at the university.
Hooven said school administrators didn’t support her after comments she made during a Fox News interview about biological sex.
The former professor told Fox News in 2021, “The ideology seems to be that biology really isn’t as important as how somebody feels about themselves or feels their sex to be.”
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“The facts are that there are, in fact, two sexes — there are male and female — and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce,” she said.
