[1421] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Ouch
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Josiah Q. Seale)
Sun Jul 6 14:22:19 2003
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 11:45:32 -0400
From: "Josiah Q. Seale" <jdseale@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
Here's the article:
http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0629/coverstory_entire.htm
Here's the bit that hurts:
-------------------------------
Superstars =96 they do it all. And they have crossed over from academia t=
o
become celebrities that average Americans have heard of. Henry Louis "Ski=
p"
Gates Jr. is a black-studies star who became a popular essayist for The N=
ew
Yorker and is now involved in film and television. Philosophy star Cornel
West, who jumped from Princeton to Harvard and back to Princeton last yea=
r,
is another, crossing over into hip-hop music and political commentary. Ni=
all
Ferguson was a superstar in Britain; his time in America bears watching.
Among the newest superstars is Steven Pinker, the MIT language and mind
specialist and a best-selling author who is now heading to the psychology
department that William James and B. F. Skinner built at Harvard. As a si=
gn
of his crossover status, Pinker was actually first courted for a job in
Harvard's English department by two of its stars, Skip Gates and Elaine
Scarry. Over jambalaya and beers at the Green Street Grill in Cambridge,
Pinker told them about his latest book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denia=
l
of Human Nature, which carefully suggests that genetics =96 not society,
family, or God =96 is the main force behind human behavior. It's hot stuf=
f,
the kind of incendiary material that has burned other scholars trying to
link genetics, IQ, and race. Pinker avoids dwelling on such links and
instead tracks the way that genes can influence our actions. "Skip and
Elaine understood where my work was going. Skip loves the concept of the
marketplace of ideas. He said to me, 'You're going to get fried. I think
it's great,' " Pinker recalls. "But the conversation set things in motion=
."
Sitting in his light-filled, spick-and-span apartment near Harvard Square=
,
Pinker is direct and relaxed, his mop of salt-and-pepper hair curling dow=
n
to his shoulders. A day earlier, he learned he was a runner-up for a
Pulitzer Prize for The Blank Slate. Yet he shows more enthusiasm talking
about the mind's struggle with irregular verbs than his own experience wi=
th
stardom. It quickly becomes clear why his Intro to Psych class is so popu=
lar
with non-psych majors: He speaks about his research with the same thrill =
and
wonder that helped the late Stephen Jay Gould popularize zoology and scie=
nce
at Harvard (an irony, given the two men's differences over evolutionary
thinking). After the dinner with Gates and Scarry, Pinker began to see ho=
w
he could spread his wings even further in Harvard's psychology department=
,
where he could delve into law, education, and humanities programs that we=
re
beyond the narrow precincts of MIT. It also became known that Lawrence
Summers was high on Pinker's work. Says one professor, "Larry told me tha=
t
if there was anything I could do to help recruit Steven Pinker, it would =
be
deeply appreciated." (Summers's spokeswoman says the president made
"encouraging noises" about recruiting Pinker and was pleased with his
appointment; whether he did more than make noise is a matter of some
delicacy at Harvard because of the president's role in the tenure process=
as
an impartial and powerful judge and jury in reviewing a scholar's
worthiness.)
MIT president Charles Vest, for his part, quickly got on the phone with
Pinker.
"I hear a terrible rumor," Vest said, according to Pinker. "Please tell m=
e
it's not true."
"Temperamentally, I'm not very good at bargaining," Pinker says now. "I'v=
e
got my condo. What am I going to get, two condos?"
Harvard ended up offering what Harvard offers best: the opportunities tha=
t
an $18 billion endowment can buy. While MIT has some prominent psychologi=
sts
and neuroscientists, Harvard has a full stable of them, and there are mor=
e
horses about to be stolen from elsewhere. While MIT has cutting-edge qual=
ity
in science and offered Pinker more graduate students and more lab funds,
Harvard has the money and the building space in Boston to catch up to MIT
eventually. And while some Harvard psychologists did raise an eyebrow ove=
r
The Blank Slate, Pinker won a unanimous vote for tenure from the departme=
nt.
"What it came down is, where do I think I will do my best work?" says
Pinker, who is 48. "And also a realization that at this point =96 it's
probably now or never."
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