‘Academic cancel culture hurting scientific credibility’ – Pinker

This is unacceptable. Pinker has no basis in fact, experience, or breadth of expertise to make such generalizations. He proclaims to be "a liberal," but his comments on "cancel culture" are more right-wing than truly conservative. Of course, he offers not a single example of "cancel culture," just an ahistorical, ideological condemnation. To sustain his claims, he would need to know the basics of the history of higher education and the historical sociology of knowledge. He knows neither. There is a significant body of historical, sociological, anthropological, and philosophical writing about "common knowledge," about which he seems unaware. Perhaps because much of it "critical literary" and historical. Further, higher education is not "an institution" but a complex of many different kinds, nor for almost all faculty is it "a business." His comments on "cancel culture" and "self-censorship" are contradictory. So, too, are his unscientific comments on "science." And he fancies himself "a linguist."