Harvard Derangement Syndrome
哈佛错乱综合症

In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes.
在哈佛任教的 22 年里，我从未害怕得罪养育我的手。2014 年，我发表了《哈佛的问题》一文，呼吁用透明且以能力为基础的招生政策取代现行的“蝾螈眼、蝙蝠翼的神秘主义”，这种神秘主义“掩盖了未知的恶意”。2023 年，我提出了“拯救哈佛的五点计划”，敦促学校承诺支持言论自由、机构中立、非暴力、观点多样性以及削弱多元化、公平与包容（D.E.I.）的权力。去年秋天，在 2023 年 10 月 7 日周年纪念日，我阐述了“我希望哈佛如何教学生谈论以色列”，呼吁学校教导学生面对道德和历史的复杂性。两年前，我共同创立了哈佛学术自由委员会，该委员会自成立以来定期挑战校方政策并推动变革。

So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”
所以，当我说现在针对哈佛的谩骂已经失去理智时，我并不是在为我的雇主辩护。批评者称哈佛是“国家耻辱”、“觉醒的伊斯兰学校”、“毛主义洗脑营”、“愚人船”、“猖獗的反犹仇恨和骚扰的堡垒”、“极端暴乱的污水池”，还是一个“伊斯兰主义前哨”，校园里的“主导观点”是“消灭犹太人，你就消灭了西方文明的根基”。

And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”
这还没算上特朗普总统的看法，他认为哈佛是“反犹太的极左机构”、“自由派烂摊子”和“民主的威胁”，并且“几乎雇佣了所有觉醒的、激进左翼的白痴和‘鸟脑’，他们只能教给学生和所谓未来领导人失败。”

This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status.
这不仅仅是口头上的攻击。在大幅削减各项研究经费的基础上，特朗普政府还特别针对哈佛，完全停止向其发放联邦资助。不满足于这些惩罚，政府最近又采取措施阻止哈佛招收外国学生，并威胁将其捐赠基金的税率提高多达十五倍，甚至取消其免税的非营利机构身份。

Call it Harvard Derangement Syndrome. As the country’s oldest, richest and most famous university, Harvard has always attracted outsize attention. In the public imagination the university is both the epitome of higher learning and a natural magnet for grievances against elites.
称之为“哈佛错乱综合症”也不为过。作为美国最古老、最富有、最著名的大学，哈佛一直备受关注。在公众的想象中，这所大学既是高等教育的典范，也是针对精英阶层不满情绪的天然焦点。

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. They generally treat it with dialectical behavior therapy, advising something like: Most people are a mix of strengths and flaws. Seeing them as all bad might not help in the long run. It’s uncomfortable when others disappoint us. How could you make space for the discomfort without letting it define your whole view of them?
心理学家发现了一种被称为“分裂”的症状，这是一种非黑即白的思维方式，患者无法将生活中的某个人视为既非崇高的天使，也非可憎的恶徒。他们通常通过辩证行为疗法来治疗，建议类似这样：大多数人都是优点与缺点的混合体。长期来看，将他们视为全然恶劣可能无益。当别人让我们失望时，我们会感到不舒服。你如何在不让这种不适定义你对他们的整体看法的情况下，为这种不适留出空间？

The nation desperately needs this sense of proportionality in dealing with its educational and cultural institutions. Harvard, as I am among the first to point out, has serious ailments. The sense that something is not well with the university is widespread, and it’s led to sympathy, even schadenfreude, with Mr. Trump’s all-out assault. But Harvard is an intricate system that developed over centuries and constantly has to grapple with competing and unexpected challenges. The appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.
国家迫切需要在处理其教育和文化机构时保持这种比例感。正如我率先指出的，哈佛存在严重的问题。普遍存在一种感觉，认为这所大学出了问题，这导致了对特朗普先生全面攻击的同情，甚至幸灾乐祸。但哈佛是一个经过数百年发展而成的复杂体系，不断必须应对竞争和意外的挑战。适当的处理方法（如同对待其他不完美的机构）是诊断哪些部分需要何种补救措施，而不是割断它的颈动脉，看着它流血而亡。

How did Harvard become such a tempting target? Some of the ire is unavoidable, a consequence of its very nature.
哈佛是如何成为如此诱人的攻击目标的？部分愤怒是不可避免的，这是其本质所致。

Harvard is huge: It has 25,000 students taught by 2,400 faculty members, spread out over 13 schools (including business and dentistry). Inevitably, these multitudes will include some eccentrics and troublemakers, and today their antics can go viral. People are vulnerable to the availability bias, in which a memorable anecdote lodges in their brains and inflates their subjective estimate of its prevalence. One loudmouth lefty becomes a Maoist indoctrination camp.
哈佛规模庞大：拥有 2.5 万名学生，2,400 名教职员工，分布在包括商学院和牙科学院在内的 13 个学院。不可避免地，这些众多人员中会有一些怪人和麻烦制造者，而如今他们的行为很容易在网络上迅速传播。人们容易受到可得性偏差的影响，即一个令人印象深刻的轶事会深植脑海，夸大其主观上的普遍性。一位喧嚣的左翼分子就被视为毛主义洗脑营。

Also, universities are committed to free speech, which includes speech we don’t like. A corporation can fire an outspoken employee; a university can’t, or shouldn’t.
此外，大学致力于言论自由，这包括我们不喜欢的言论。公司可以解雇直言不讳的员工；大学则不能，也不应该这样做。

Harvard, too, is not a monastic order but part of a global network. Most of our graduate students and faculty members were trained elsewhere and go to the same conferences and read the same publications as everyone else in academia. Despite Harvard’s conceit of specialness, just about everything that happens here may be found at other research-intensive universities.
哈佛也不是一个修道院式的组织，而是全球网络的一部分。我们的大多数研究生和教职员工都在其他地方接受培训，参加同样的会议，阅读与学术界其他人相同的出版物。尽管哈佛自视特殊，但这里发生的几乎所有事情，在其他研究型大学都能找到。

Finally, our students are not blank slates which we can inscribe at will. Young people are shaped by peers more than most people realize. Students are shaped by the peer cultures in their high schools, at Harvard and (especially with social media) in the world. In many cases, students’ politics are no more attributable to indoctrination by professors than are their green hair and pierced septums.
最后，我们的学生并非可以随意书写的白板。年轻人受到同龄人影响的程度远超过大多数人的想象。学生们受到高中、哈佛大学，尤其是在社交媒体时代，全球同龄人文化的塑造。在许多情况下，学生的政治观点并不像他们的绿色头发和穿孔鼻梁那样，是教授灌输的结果。

Yet some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned. My colleagues and I have worried for years about the erosion of academic freedom here, exemplified by some notorious persecutions. In 2021 the biologist Carole Hooven was demonized and ostracized, effectively driving her out of Harvard, for explaining in an interview how biology defines male and female. Her cancellation was the last straw that led us to create the academic freedom council, but it was neither the first nor the last.
然而，对哈佛的一些敌意是有原因的。我和同事们多年来一直担心这里学术自由的侵蚀，这在一些臭名昭著的迫害事件中表现得尤为明显。2021 年，生物学家卡罗尔·胡文因在一次采访中解释生物学如何定义男性和女性而被妖魔化和排斥，实际上被迫离开哈佛。她的被“取消”成为我们成立学术自由委员会的最后一根稻草，但这既不是第一次，也不会是最后一次。

The epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele was forced to grovel in “restorative justice” sessions when someone discovered that he had co-signed an amicus brief in the 2015 Supreme Court case arguing against same-sex marriage. A class by the bioengineer Kit Parker on evaluating crime prevention programs was quashed after students found it “disturbing.” The legal scholar Ronald Sullivan was dismissed as faculty dean of a residential house when his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein made students feel “unsafe.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression tallies such incidents, and in the past two years ranked Harvard last in free speech among some 250 surveyed colleges and universities.
流行病学家泰勒·范德韦尔（Tyler VanderWeele）因有人发现他曾联署支持 2015 年最高法院反对同性婚姻的法庭之友意见书，不得不在“修复性司法”会议中低声下气。生物工程师基特·帕克（Kit Parker）开设的一门评估犯罪预防项目的课程因学生觉得“令人不安”而被取消。法律学者罗纳德·沙利文（Ronald Sullivan）因为为哈维·温斯坦提供法律辩护，使学生感到“不安全”，被免去住宅学院的教职院长职务。个人权利与表达基金会统计了此类事件，在过去两年中，在约 250 所被调查的高校中，哈佛在言论自由方面排名垫底。

These cancellations are not just injustices against individuals. Honest scholarly inquiry is difficult if researchers constantly have to watch their backs lest a professional remark expose them to character assassination, or if a conservative opinion is treated as a crime. In the Sullivan case, the university abdicated its responsibility to educate mature citizens by indulging its students’ emotions rather than teaching them about the Sixth Amendment and the difference between mob justice and the rule of law.
这些取消不仅仅是不公正对待个人。诚实的学术探究变得困难，如果研究人员必须时刻提防自己的言论被用来进行人格诋毁，或者保守观点被视为犯罪。在沙利文案中，大学放弃了培养成熟公民的责任，纵容学生的情绪，而不是教导他们第六修正案以及暴民正义与法治的区别。

But a woke madrasa? This is black-and-white splitting, in need of behavior therapy. Simply enumerating cancellations, especially at a large and conspicuous institution like Harvard, can overshadow the vastly greater number of times that heterodox opinions are voiced without anyone making a fuss. As troubled as I am by assaults on academic freedom at Harvard, the last-place finish does not pass the smell test.
但一个觉醒的伊斯兰学校？这是一种非黑即白的分裂思维，需要行为疗法。仅仅列举取消事件，尤其是在像哈佛这样大型且显眼的机构，可能会掩盖更多异端观点被表达而无人争议的情况。尽管我对哈佛学术自由受到攻击感到忧虑，但这个垫底的结论并不可信。

I’ll start with myself. During my decades at the university I’ve taught many controversial ideas, including the reality of sex differences, the heritability of intelligence and the evolutionary roots of violence (while inviting my students to disagree, as long as they provide reasons). I claim no courage: The result has been zero protests, several university honors and warm relations with every chair, dean and president.
我先从自己说起。在我几十年的大学教学生涯中，我讲授过许多有争议的观点，包括性别差异的现实、智力的遗传性以及暴力的进化根源（同时邀请学生提出异议，只要他们能给出理由）。我并不自诩勇敢：结果是零抗议，获得了多项大学荣誉，并与每位系主任、院长和校长保持着良好关系。

Most of my colleagues, too, follow the data and report what their findings indicate or show, however politically incorrect. A few examples: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racism has been in decline. Phonics is essential to reading instruction. Trigger warnings can do more harm than good. Africans were active in the slave trade. Educational attainment is partly in the genes. Cracking down on drugs has benefits, and legalizing them has harms. Markets can make people fairer and more generous. For all the headlines, day-to-day life at Harvard consists of publishing ideas without fear or favor.
我的大多数同事也同样遵循数据，报道他们的发现所显示的内容，无论这些内容多么政治不正确。举几个例子：种族具有一定的生物学现实；婚姻能减少犯罪；热点警务同样有效；种族主义在逐渐减少；语音教学对阅读教育至关重要；触发警告可能弊大于利；非洲人在奴隶贸易中扮演了积极角色；教育成就部分受基因影响；打击毒品有益处，合法化则有害处；市场机制能使人们更公平、更慷慨。尽管有各种头条新闻，哈佛的日常生活依然是无所畏惧、公正地发表观点。

Another area in which Harvard’s shortcomings are genuine, but seeing it as all bad does not help in the long run, is viewpoint diversity. According to a 2023 survey in The Harvard Crimson, 45 percent of members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences identified their politics as “liberal,” 32 percent as “very liberal,” 20 percent as “moderate” and only 3 percent as “conservative” or “very conservative.” (The survey did not include the option “woke Radical Left idiot birdbrain.”) FIRE’s estimate of conservative faculty members is slightly higher, at 6 percent.
哈佛的另一个确实存在不足之处是观点多样性，但将其视为全然负面从长远来看无益。根据《哈佛红报》2023 年的一项调查，艺术与科学学院 45%的成员自认政治立场为“自由派”，32%为“极度自由派”，20%为“中间派”，仅有 3%为“保守派”或“极度保守派”。（调查中未包含“觉醒的激进左翼愚蠢鸟脑”选项。）FIRE 对保守派教员的估计略高，为 6%。

A university need not be a representative democracy, but too little political diversity can compromise its mission. In 2015 a team of social scientists showed how a liberal monoculture had steered their field into scientific errors, such as prematurely concluding that liberals are less prejudiced than conservatives because they had tested for prejudice against African Americans and Muslims but not against evangelicals.
一所大学不必是代议制民主，但政治多样性过少可能会影响其使命。2015 年，一组社会科学家展示了自由主义单一文化如何导致他们的领域出现科学错误，例如过早得出自由主义者比保守派偏见更少的结论，因为他们只测试了对非裔美国人和穆斯林的偏见，却没有测试对福音派的偏见。

A poll of my colleagues on the academic freedom council turned up many examples in which they felt political narrowness had skewed research in their specialties. In climate policy, it led to a focus on demonizing fossil fuel companies rather than acknowledging the universal desire for abundant energy; in pediatrics, taking all adolescents’ reported gender dysphoria at face value; in public health, advocating maximalist government interventions rather than cost-benefit analyses; in history, emphasizing the harms of colonialism but not of communism or Islamism; in social science, attributing all group disparities to racism but never to culture; and in women’s studies, permitting the study of sexism and stereotypes but not sexual selection, sexology or hormones (not coincidentally, Hooven’s specialty).
我在学术自由委员会的同事中进行的一项调查显示，许多人认为政治狭隘性扭曲了他们专业领域的研究。在气候政策方面，这导致关注点集中在妖魔化化石燃料公司，而忽视了人们对充足能源的普遍渴望；在儿科学中，完全相信所有青少年报告的性别焦虑；在公共卫生领域，主张最大化政府干预，而非进行成本效益分析；在历史学中，强调殖民主义的危害，却忽视共产主义或伊斯兰主义的危害；在社会科学中，将所有群体差异归因于种族主义，却从不考虑文化因素；在女性研究中，允许研究性别歧视和刻板印象，但不允许研究性选择、性学或激素（这恰好是胡文的专长）。

Though Harvard indisputably would profit from more political and intellectual diversity, it is still far from a “radical left institution.” If The Crimson survey is any guide, a sizable majority of faculty across Harvard locate themselves to the right of “very liberal,” and they include dozens of prominent conservatives, like the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule and the economist Greg Mankiw. For years the most popular undergraduate courses have been the introduction to mainstream economics taught by a succession of conservatives and neoliberals, and the resolutely apolitical introductions to probability, computer science and life sciences.
尽管哈佛无疑会从更多的政治和思想多样性中受益，但它仍远非“激进左翼机构”。如果以《哈佛红报》的调查为参考，哈佛大多数教职员工自认政治立场位于“非常自由”右侧，其中包括众多知名保守派人士，如法律学者阿德里安·弗米尔和经济学家格雷格·曼昆。多年来，最受欢迎的本科课程一直是由一批保守派和新自由主义者轮流教授的主流经济学导论，以及坚定保持政治中立的概率论、计算机科学和生命科学导论。

Of course, Harvard also has plenty of offerings like Queer Ethnography and Decolonizing the Gaze, but they tend to be boutique courses with small enrollments. One of my students has developed an artificial-intelligence-based “Woke-o-Meter” that assesses course descriptions for Marxist, postmodernist and critical social justice themes (signaled by terms like “heteronormativity,” “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “late-stage capitalism” and “deconstruction”). He estimates that they make up at most 3 percent of the 5,000 courses in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ 2025-26 course catalog and 6 percent of its larger General Education courses (though about a third of these had a discernible leftward tilt). More typical are offerings like Cellular Basis of Neuronal Function, Beginning German (Intensive) and The Fall of the Roman Empire.
当然，哈佛也开设了许多课程，如酷儿民族志和去殖民视角，但这些课程通常是小众课程，招生人数较少。我的一位学生开发了一个基于人工智能的“觉醒度计”，用来评估课程描述中是否包含马克思主义、后现代主义和批判性社会正义主题（通过“异性恋规范性”、“交叉性”、“系统性种族主义”、“晚期资本主义”和“解构”等词汇来识别）。他估计，在艺术与科学学院 2025-26 学年课程目录中的 5000 门课程中，这类课程最多占 3%，在更大的通识教育课程中占 6%（其中约三分之一明显偏向左翼）。更典型的课程则是《神经元功能的细胞基础》、《德语入门（强化班）》和《罗马帝国的衰落》。

And if Harvard is teaching its students to “despise the free-market system,” we’re not doing a very good job. The most popular undergraduate concentrations are economics and computer science, and half of our graduates march from their commencement ceremony straight into jobs in finance, consulting and technology.
如果哈佛正在教导学生“鄙视自由市场体系”，那我们做得并不好。最受欢迎的本科专业是经济学和计算机科学，半数毕业生从毕业典礼直接进入金融、咨询和科技行业工作。

How to achieve an optimal diversity of viewpoints in a university is a difficult problem and an obsession of our council. Of course, not every viewpoint should be represented. The universe of ideas is infinite, and many of them are not worthy of serious attention, such as astrology, flat earthism, and Holocaust denial. The demand of the Trump administration to audit Harvard’s programs for diversity and jawbone a “critical mass” of government-approved contrarians into the noncompliant ones would be poisonous both to the university and to democracy. The biology department could be forced to hire creationists, the medical school vaccine skeptics and the history department denialists of the 2020 election. Harvard had no choice but to reject the ultimatum, becoming an unlikely folk hero in the process.
如何在大学中实现观点的最佳多样性是一个难题，也是我们理事会的执念。当然，并非所有观点都应被代表。思想的宇宙是无限的，许多观点不值得认真对待，比如占星术、地平说和否认大屠杀。特朗普政府要求审查哈佛的多样性项目，并强迫“关键数量”的政府认可的反对者进入不合规名单，这对大学和民主都是有害的。生物系可能被迫聘用创世论者，医学院聘用疫苗怀疑者，历史系聘用 2020 年选举否认者。哈佛别无选择，只能拒绝这一最后通牒，因而意外成为民间英雄。

Still, universities cannot continue to ignore the problem. Though obsessed with implicit racism and sexism, they have been insensitive to the most powerful cognitive distorter of all, the “myside bias” that makes all of us credulous about the cherished beliefs of ourselves or our political or cultural coalitions. Universities should set the expectation that faculty members leave their politics at the classroom door, and affirm the rationalist virtues of epistemic humility and active open-mindedness. To these ends, a bit of D.E.I. for conservatives would not hurt. As the economist Joan Robinson put it, “Ideology is like breath: You never smell your own.”
尽管如此，大学不能继续忽视这个问题。虽然他们痴迷于隐性种族主义和性别歧视，却对最强大的认知扭曲——“我方偏见”——视而不见，这种偏见使我们对自己或政治文化联盟所珍视的信念轻信不疑。大学应当设定期望，要求教师在课堂上摒弃政治立场，倡导理性主义的美德，即认识上的谦逊和积极的开放心态。为此，保守派也需要一些多样性、公平与包容（D.E.I.）的理念。正如经济学家琼·罗宾逊所说：“意识形态就像呼吸：你永远闻不到自己的味道。”

The most painful indictment of Harvard is its alleged antisemitism — not the old-money WASP snobbery of Oliver Barrett III, but a spillover of anti-Zionist zealotry. A recent, long-awaited report detailed many troubling incidents. Jewish students have felt intimidated by anti-Israel protests that have disrupted classes, ceremonies and everyday campus life, often met with a confused response by the university. Members of the teaching staff have gratuitously injected pro-Palestinian activism into courses or university programming. Many Jewish students, particularly Israelis, reported being ostracized or demonized by their peers.
对哈佛最痛苦的指控是其所谓的反犹主义——这不是奥利弗·巴雷特三世那种旧钱新教徒的势利眼，而是反犹太复国主义狂热的溢出效应。一份近期备受期待的报告详细列举了许多令人不安的事件。犹太学生感到被反以色列抗议所恐吓，这些抗议扰乱了课堂、典礼和日常校园生活，大学对此常常反应迷茫。部分教职员工无故将亲巴勒斯坦的激进主义融入课程或大学活动中。许多犹太学生，尤其是以色列学生，报告称被同龄人排斥或妖魔化。

As with its other maladies, Harvard’s antisemitism has to be considered with a modicum of discernment. Yes, the problems are genuine. But “a bastion of rampant anti-Jew hatred” with the aim of “destroying the Jews as a first step to destroying Western civilization”? Oy gevalt!
正如哈佛的其他弊病一样，其反犹主义也需要以一定的辨别力来看待。是的，问题确实存在。但“一个猖獗反犹仇恨的堡垒”，其目的是“摧毁犹太人，作为摧毁西方文明的第一步”？天哪！

In response to the infamous statement by 34 student groups after Oct. 7 holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre, more than 400 Harvard faculty members posted an open letter in protest. A new collective, Harvard Faculty for Israel, has attracted 450 members. Harvard offers more than 60 courses with Jewish themes, including eight Yiddish language courses. And though the 300-page antisemitism report reviews every instance it could find in the past century, down to the last graffito and social media post, it cited no expressions of a goal to “destroy the Jews,” let alone signs that it was the “dominant view on campus.”
针对 10 月 7 日后 34 个学生团体发表的“完全将以色列对大屠杀负责”的臭名昭著声明，超过 400 名哈佛教职员工发表公开信表示抗议。一个名为“哈佛支持以色列教职工联盟”的新团体已吸引了 450 名成员。哈佛开设了 60 多门以犹太主题为主的课程，其中包括八门意第绪语课程。尽管这份 300 页的反犹报告详尽回顾了过去一个世纪内所有可查的反犹事件，甚至包括最后的涂鸦和社交媒体帖子，但报告未发现任何“消灭犹太人”目标的表达，更未发现这是“校园主流观点”的迹象。

For what it’s worth, I have experienced no antisemitism in my two decades at Harvard, and nor have other prominent Jewish faculty members. My own discomfort instead is captured in a Crimson essay by the Harvard senior Jacob Miller, who called the claim that one in four Jewish students feels “physically unsafe” on campus “an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.” The obsession with antisemitism at Harvard represents, ironically, a surrender to the critical-social-justice credo that the only wrong worthy of condemnation is group-against-group bigotry. Instead of directly rebutting the flaws of the anti-Zionist platform, such as its approval of violence against civilians and its historical blind spots, critics have tried to tar it with the sin of antisemitism. But that can devolve into futile semantic disputation about the meaning of the word “antisemitism,” which, our council has argued, can lead to infringements on academic freedom.
就我所知，在哈佛的二十年里，我没有经历过反犹太主义，其他知名的犹太教职员工也没有。我的不适感则体现在哈佛高年级学生雅各布·米勒在《Crimson》上的一篇文章中，他称“一四分之一的犹太学生感到校园‘身体不安全’”的说法是“一个荒谬的统计数据，作为一个每天公开自豪地戴着犹太小圆帽在校园里走动的人，我很难认真对待”。对哈佛反犹太主义的痴迷，讽刺地说，是对批判性社会正义信条的屈服——即唯一值得谴责的错误是群体对群体的偏见。批评者没有直接反驳反犹太复国主义立场的缺陷，比如其对针对平民暴力的认可及其历史盲点，而是试图用反犹太主义的罪名来玷污它。但这可能演变成关于“反犹太主义”一词含义的无谓语义争论，我们的委员会认为，这可能导致对学术自由的侵犯。

Harvard’s antisemitism report has recommended many sensible and overdue reforms, and that’s the point: Responsible people, faced with problems in a complex institution, try to identify the flaws and fix them. Blowing off such efforts as “spraying perfume on a sewer” is unhelpful.
哈佛的反犹太主义报告提出了许多明智且早该实施的改革建议，这正是关键所在：负责任的人在面对复杂机构中的问题时，会努力找出缺陷并加以修正。将这些努力贬低为“在下水道上喷香水”毫无帮助。

One set has already been adopted: to enforce regulations already on the books that prevent protests from crossing the line from expressions of opinion to campaigns of disruption, coercion and intimidation.
已有一套措施被采纳：执行现有法规，防止抗议活动从表达意见转变为破坏、胁迫和恐吓的运动。

Another no-brainer is to apply standards of scholarly excellence more uniformly. Harvard has almost 400 initiatives, centers and programs, which are distinct from its academic departments. A few were captured by activist lecturers and became, in effect, Centers for Anti-Israel Studies. At the same time, Harvard has a paucity of professors with disinterested expertise in Israel, the Middle East conflict and antisemitism. The report calls for greater professorial and decanal oversight of these subjects.
另一个显而易见的做法是更统一地应用学术卓越标准。哈佛拥有近 400 个项目、中心和计划，这些与其学术系别不同。其中一些被激进讲师掌控，实际上变成了反以色列研究中心。与此同时，哈佛缺乏在以色列、中东冲突和反犹主义方面具有客观专业知识的教授。报告呼吁加强教授和院长对这些领域的监督。

Harvard can’t police its students’ social lives or social media posts (particularly on anonymous platforms where the vilest antisemitism was expressed). But it can enforce its regulations against discrimination on the basis of religion, national origin and political belief, and against blatant derelictions such as a teaching assistant dismissing sections so students can attend anti-Israel protests. It could treat antisemitism with the same gravity with which it treats racism, and it could set expectations, as soon as students take their first steps into Harvard Yard, that they treat one another with respect and openness to disagreement.
哈佛无法监管学生的社交生活或社交媒体帖子（尤其是在那些匿名平台上，最恶劣的反犹主义言论得以表达）。但它可以执行针对基于宗教、国籍和政治信仰的歧视的规定，也可以制止明显的失职行为，比如助教为了让学生参加反以色列抗议而取消课程。哈佛可以像对待种族主义那样严肃对待反犹主义，并且可以从学生踏入哈佛校园的第一步起，就设定期望，要求他们彼此尊重并开放接受不同意见。

Just as clear is what won’t work: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.
同样明确的是，特朗普政府对哈佛科学的惩罚性削减资金是行不通的。与普遍误解相反，联邦拨款不是对大学的施舍，行政部门也不能以此作为筹码，强迫受助者做任何它想做的事。这是一种服务费——即政府经过激烈竞争评审后决定对国家有益的研究项目的资助。该拨款用于支付开展该研究所需的人员和设备费用，否则这些研究将无法进行。

Mr. Trump’s strangling of this support will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.
特朗普先生对这项支持的扼杀，将对犹太人造成比我有生之年任何一位总统都更大的伤害。许多从事科学研究和有志于科学事业的人都是犹太人，而他的资金禁令让他们惊恐地目睹自己被解雇、实验室被关闭，或科学事业的梦想化为泡影。这远比路过一块“全球化起义”标语牌更具破坏性。更糟糕的是，这对科学界中数量更多的非犹太人产生了影响，他们被告知自己的实验室和职业生涯正被扼杀，以推动犹太人的利益。同样，当前接受实验性治疗的患者将被迫中断治疗，未来可能因此失去治愈的机会。这一切对犹太人都没有好处。

The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.”
对犹太人的关切显然是不真诚的，因为特朗普先生同情否认大屠杀者和希特勒的支持者。显而易见的动机是削弱作为行政部门外影响力中心的公民社会机构。正如 JD·万斯在 2021 年一次演讲的标题中所说：“大学是敌人。”

If the federal government doesn’t force Harvard to reform, what will? There are legitimate concerns that universities have weak mechanisms for feedback and self-improvement. A business in the red can fire its chief executive; a losing team can replace its coach. But most academic fields don’t have objective metrics of success and rely instead on peer review, which can amount to professors conferring prestige on one another in self-affirming cliques.
如果联邦政府不强制哈佛进行改革，还有什么能做到呢？人们确实担心大学缺乏有效的反馈和自我改进机制。一家亏损的企业可以解雇其首席执行官；一支连败的球队可以更换教练。但大多数学术领域没有客观的成功标准，而是依赖同行评审，这往往变成教授们在自我肯定的小圈子中相互授予声望。

Worse, many universities have punished professors and students who criticize their policies, a recipe for permanent dysfunction. Last year a Harvard dean actually justified this repression until our academic freedom council came down on the idea like a ton of bricks and his boss swiftly disavowed it.
更糟的是，许多大学惩罚批评其政策的教授和学生，这无疑是导致永久性失调的根源。去年，哈佛一位院长竟然为这种压制辩护，直到我们的学术自由委员会严厉反对这一观点，他的上司才迅速予以否认。

Still, there are ways to let the light get in. Universities could give a stronger mandate to the external “visiting committees” that ostensibly audit departments and programs but in practice are subject to regulatory capture. University leaders constantly get an earful from disgruntled alumni, donors and journalists, and they should use it, judiciously, as a sanity check. The governing boards should be more tuned in to university affairs and take more responsibility for its health. The Harvard Corporation is so reclusive that when two of its members dined with members of the academic freedom council in 2023, The Times deemed it worthy of a news story.
不过，仍有方法让光明照进来。大学可以赋予外部“访问委员会”更强的授权，这些委员会名义上负责审计各系和项目，但实际上常被监管俘获。大学领导层经常听到不满的校友、捐赠者和记者的抱怨，他们应当明智地利用这些反馈，作为理智的检验。管理委员会应更加关注大学事务，并承担更多维护其健康的责任。哈佛公司极为隐秘，以至于 2023 年其两名成员与学术自由委员会成员共进晚餐时，《纽约时报》都认为值得报道。

Harvard’s nearly two-year ordeal in the public eye has, perhaps belatedly, prompted many reforms. It has adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, no longer pontificating on issues that don’t affect its own functioning. It has drawn lines on disruptive protests and will create centralized enforcement so that violators can’t jury-shop or count on faculty nullification. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has eliminated the “diversity statements” that vetted job applicants for their willingness to write woke-o-babble, and its dean has called on program directors to report on their units’ viewpoint diversity. The rogue centers are under investigation, and their directors have been replaced. The task force report, solemnly accepted by the university’s president, Alan Garber, shows that antisemitism is being taken seriously. A new classroom compact enjoins students to be open to ideas that challenge their beliefs.
哈佛近两年来在公众视野中的风波，或许虽迟但到，促使了许多改革。学校已采纳机构中立政策，不再对与自身运作无关的问题妄加评论。它划定了对扰乱性抗议的界限，并将建立集中执法机制，防止违规者通过挑选陪审团或依赖教师否决来逃避责任。文理学院取消了“多样性声明”，不再以此审查求职者是否愿意写“觉醒废话”，其院长也已要求项目主管报告各单位的观点多样性。那些不受控的研究中心正在接受调查，其负责人已被替换。由校长艾伦·加伯庄严接受的工作组报告显示，反犹主义问题正被严肃对待。一项新的课堂协议要求学生对挑战其信念的观点保持开放态度。

The uncomfortable fact is that many of these reforms followed Mr. Trump’s inauguration and overlap with his demands. But if you’re standing in a downpour and Mr. Trump tells you to put up an umbrella, you shouldn’t refuse just to spite him.
令人不安的事实是，许多这些改革是在特朗普先生就职后进行的，并且与他的要求有重叠。但如果你正站在倾盆大雨中，而特朗普先生告诉你撑伞，你不应该仅仅为了反对他而拒绝。

And doing things for good reasons is, I believe, the way for universities to right themselves and regain public trust. It sounds banal, but too often universities have been steered by the desire to placate their students, avoid making enemies and stay out of the headlines. We saw how well that worked out.
我相信，出于正当理由行事，是大学自我纠正并重获公众信任的途径。听起来很平凡，但大学往往被取悦学生、避免树敌和远离头条新闻的欲望所驱使。我们已经看到了这种做法的结果。

Instead, university leaders should be prepared to affirm the paramount goal of a university — discovering and transmitting knowledge — and the principles necessary to pursue it. Universities have a mandate and the expertise to pursue knowledge, not social justice. Intellectual freedom is not a privilege of professors but the only way that fallible humans gain knowledge. Disagreements should be negotiated with analysis and argument, not recriminations of bigotry and victimhood. Protests may be used to generate common knowledge of a grievance, but not to shut people up or coerce the university into doing what the protesters want. The university commons belongs to the community, whose members may legitimately disagree with one another, and it may not be usurped by one faction. The endowment is not an op-ed page but a treasure that the university is obligated to hold in trust for future generations.
相反，大学领导应准备确认大学的最高目标——发现和传递知识——以及实现这一目标所必需的原则。大学有使命和专业知识去追求知识，而非社会正义。知识自由不是教授的特权，而是人类获得知识的唯一途径。分歧应通过分析和论证来解决，而非以偏见和受害者心态进行指责。抗议可以用来传播对某一不满的共识，但不能用来压制他人或强迫大学满足抗议者的要求。大学公共空间属于整个社区，社区成员可以合法地存在分歧，不能被某一派系篡夺。捐赠基金不是专栏页面，而是大学有义务为子孙后代信托保管的宝藏。

Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon. They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.
这为什么重要？尽管哈佛有诸多缺点，但哈佛（以及其他大学）确实让世界变得更美好，且影响深远。哈佛有 52 位教职员工获得诺贝尔奖，拥有超过 5800 项专利。其研究人员发明了发酵粉、首次器官移植、可编程计算机、除颤器、梅毒检测和口服补液疗法（一种廉价的治疗方法，挽救了数千万生命）。他们发展了核稳定理论，拯救世界免于末日浩劫。他们发明了高尔夫球座和捕手面罩。哈佛孕育了《芝麻街》、《国家讽刺杂志》、《辛普森一家》、微软和脸书。

Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
哈佛正在进行的研究包括甲烷追踪卫星、机器人导管、下一代电池以及中风患者的可穿戴机器人。联邦资助支持的研究涵盖转移、肿瘤抑制、儿童放疗和化疗、多重耐药感染、疫情预防、痴呆症、麻醉、消防和军队中的毒素减少、太空飞行的生理影响以及战场伤口护理。哈佛的技术专家正在推动量子计算、人工智能、纳米材料、生物力学、军用可折叠桥梁、防黑客计算机网络和老年人智能生活环境的创新。一家实验室已开发出可能治愈 1 型糖尿病的方法。

Practical applications are not the only things that make Harvard precious. It is a phantasmagoria of ideas, a Disneyland of the mind. Learning about my colleagues’ research is a source of endless delight, and when I look at our course catalog, I wish I were 18 again. DNA extracted from human fossils reveals the origin of the Indo-European languages. Grimm’s fairy tales, with their murder, infanticide, cannibalism and incest, reveal our eternal fascination with the morbid. A single network in the brain underlies remembering the past and daydreaming about the future. Nonviolent resistance movements are more successful than violent ones. The ailments of pregnancy come from a Darwinian struggle between mother and fetus. The “Who is like you?” prayer in the Jewish liturgy suggests that the ancient Israelites were ambivalent about their monotheism.
哈佛的珍贵不仅仅在于其实用应用。它是一个思想的幻境，是心灵的迪士尼乐园。了解同事们的研究让我无比欣喜，当我翻看课程目录时，真希望自己能重回 18 岁。提取自人类化石的 DNA 揭示了印欧语系的起源。格林童话中充满了谋杀、婴儿杀害、食人和乱伦，展现了我们对病态的永恒迷恋。大脑中的一个网络既支撑着对过去的记忆，也支撑着对未来的白日梦。非暴力抵抗运动比暴力运动更为成功。妊娠期的疾病源于母亲与胎儿之间的达尔文式斗争。犹太礼拜中的“谁能像你？”祷告暗示古代以色列人对他们的独一神信仰持矛盾态度。

And if you’re still skeptical that universities are worth supporting, consider these questions: Do you think that the number of children who die every year from cancer is just about right? Are you content with your current chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Do you feel our current understanding of which government policies are effective and which ones are wasteful is perfect? Are you happy with the way the climate is going, given our current energy technology?
如果你仍然怀疑大学是否值得支持，请考虑以下问题：你认为每年因癌症去世的儿童数量刚好合适吗？你对自己患阿尔茨海默病的现有风险感到满意吗？你觉得我们目前对哪些政府政策有效、哪些浪费的理解已经完美了吗？鉴于我们现有的能源技术，你对气候变化的现状感到满意吗？

In his manifesto for progress, “The Beginning of Infinity,” the physicist David Deutsch wrote, “Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge.” To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.
在他的进步宣言《无限的起点》中，物理学家大卫·多伊奇写道：“凡是不违反自然法则的事情，只要掌握了正确的知识，都是可以实现的。” 削弱获取和传递知识的机构，是一场悲剧性的错误，也是对未来世代的犯罪。

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of the forthcoming book “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows … : Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”
史蒂文·平克是哈佛大学约翰斯通家族心理学教授，即将出版的新书《当人人皆知……：常识与金钱、权力及日常生活的奥秘》的作者。

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
《纽约时报》致力于刊登多样化的读者来信。我们希望听到您对本文或任何文章的看法。以下是一些建议。我们的邮箱是：letters@nytimes.com。

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
关注《纽约时报》观点版块的 Facebook、Instagram、TikTok、Bluesky、WhatsApp 和 Threads 账号。