Is The Juice Worth the Squeeze?

Dr. Carole Hooven is an associate in the lab of Steven Pinker at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She taught at Harvard for 17 years, serving as a lecturer and codirector of undergraduate studies in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. After the publication of her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us, she appeared on Fox and Friends in 2021 to discuss the pressure some academics feel to refrain from using terms like “pregnant women” and “male and female.” The director of her department’s DEI taskforce called her remarks “transphobic,” and a petition was circulated against her by Harvard faculty. She was attacked along the same lines by others in academia, and teaching assistants boycotted her award-winning course so that she could no longer teach.

In spite of this horrific experience, Professor Hooven has provided eloquent defenses of scientific accuracy and academic freedom, including an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior entitled, “Academic Freedom Is Social Justice: Sex, Gender, and Cancel Culture on Campus.” She has demonstrated a sincere commitment to respecting students’ preferences while advocating that the biological differences between males and females do not infringe on the dignity of either sex. Her courage to stand up for scientific truth and free expression has earned her the much-deserved title of Hero of Intellectual Freedom.