Harvard vs Trump? Or a retired Harvard University professor of government vs a retired HS biology teacher.

 Harvey Mansfield, a retired professor of government at Harvard University and author of “Where Harvard Went Wrong” had his opinion piece originally printed in the Harvard Crimson, adapted in today’s Washington Post [5-29-26] titled “Harvard vs. Trump is the result of a pronoun error”. 

(I've decided to pick on Professor Mansfield because the WPost printed one of my Letters to the Editor on Memorial Day regarding the global hunger consequences from the Strait of Hormuz blockade, and how rising infant mortally is a key cause of nation state failures...which eventually impacts all of us.  It would be highly unlikely for them to print this long rant so soon after.)  

 It appears the retired professor has not kept up with advances biological sex determinism -- or the genetic variation possibilities both within males and females  - that can result in about 9 smaller chromosome variations between them.  

 He argued that the divide between Harvard and Trump stems from a “pronoun error”.   His choice of words unintentionally demonstrated something far more important: what happens when a brilliant political theorist wanders too far from modern biology, neuroscience, and reality itself.

 Mansfield tells us science deals with numbers while the humanities deal with persons. Science studies “objects”; the humanities study Shakespeare, Homer, and human greatness. It’s a lovely belief — if one ignores the last 150 years of scientific understanding about what human beings actually are.

 Apparently, in Mansfield’s world, biologists, neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, and anthropologists spend their days studying calculators and toaster ovens rather than living organisms with nervous systems, emotions, attachment needs, tribal instincts, trauma responses, hormonal systems, social wiring, and evolutionary survival strategies.

 One almost imagines a surgeon entering an operating room declaring: “I don’t need to know your name, sex, hormones, chromosomes, immune profile, developmental history, or pronouns. I deal only in repairing the human body!”  But that won’t avoid an expensive malpractice lawsuit.

 Mansfield writes as though “persons” somehow exist outside basic biology.  But modern science increasingly shows that consciousness, empathy, morality, cooperation, identity, fear, aggression, tribalism, and even our longing for meaning is deeply rooted in evolved social systems. Human beings are not detached philosophical clouds floating above nature. We are primates with great genetic variability within a perpetually adapting social species.

 Yes, names matter. Pronouns matter too. Human beings are intensely social creatures whose brains evolved to navigate identity, belonging, status, recognition, and social trust. Entire regions of the nervous system react to exclusion, humiliation, disrespect, and social isolation. Science does not erase humanity; it explains why humans behave the way we do.

 Mansfield also claims the humanities do not “progress” because nobody surpasses Homer or Shakespeare. But humanities absolutely evolve. Our understanding of slavery, women’s rights, Gay rights, trauma, addiction, authoritarianism, propaganda, colonialism, child development, and human psychology has evolved. Even literature itself evolves because human beings evolve in their understanding of themselves as times change. What Mansfield misses is that science and the humanities are not competitors. They’re incomplete without each another.

 Science without ethical reflection gives us nuclear weapons, addictive algorithms, ecological collapse, incomplete medical procedures, and engineered misinformation. And humanities without scientific literacy give us intellectuals confidently writing essays about “human nature” while appearing unfamiliar with evolutionary biology, behavioral psychology, endocrinology, or the fact that humans are mammals that never stop evolving with increasing genetic variability.

 He writes that science cannot prove science is “good.” Fair enough. Science is a method, not a moral compass. But science can absolutely demonstrate that cooperation, empathy, secure attachment, education, nutrition, public health, emotional regulation, and social trust dramatically improve human flourishing and reduce violence. It can also demonstrate that chronic fear, inequality, propaganda, trauma, tribal polarization, ignoring personal identities, and untreated mental illness destabilize societies.

 In summary, science may not define morality, but it is remarkably good at measuring the consequences of ignoring it.

 Perhaps the funniest part of the essay is Mansfield’s concern about “independence.” Modern science increasingly reveals that independence itself is basically a mental comforting illusion. Every human being arrives helpless, survives through cooperation, learns language socially, regulates emotions socially, depends on ecosystems they did not create, and inherits knowledge plus genetic variability accumulated over thousands of years of collective effort.

 Even Harvard professors are products of these dependency systems.

 The deeper irony is that Harvard’s motto is Veritas — truth. Truth does not belong exclusively to science or the humanities. Reality does not care about departmental boundaries. The real crisis in higher education is not that science dominates the humanities. It is that too many educated people remain trapped inside intellectual silos while civilization faces interconnected crises requiring basic education in biology, ethics, psychology, ecology, mathematics, philosophy, and most important ‘Common Sense’ (Thomas Paine’s assertion that the only legitimate purpose of government is the political wisdom to work together to protect people’s “freedom and Security”.  We need more science to fully recover our humanity.  And humanities professors who understand science, scientists who understand ethics, politicians who understand reality, and citizens educated enough to tell the difference between wisdom and elegant nostalgia, regardless of their political science beliefs and hypothesis.