Pinker was right, I was wrong

No, that's not what he said. This is what he said:

"The problem is not with academic leaders “having a foreign policy” in the sense of expressing opinions and seeking to achieve political change; it’s with expectations or demands such as Emanuel’s that academic leaders should have a foreign policy, that it’s part of the job, that it’s a matter of leadership."

In other words, condemning atrocities is fine, but it's optional, not a required part of the job.

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EDIT: The title of the article is clearly tongue-in-cheek. If you don't realize that, and you take the title 100% literally, you've missed something crucial. It should be clear when the author begins by talking about "wearing earth tones, driving Priuses", which he still thinks is an absurd stereotype by Pinker.

Also: "So here’s where I agree with Pinker. Or, to be more precise [emphasis mine], where I agree with his implicit point [emphasis mine]."

Further quotes to show what the author is really talking about, which is the demand that university leaders make statements:

"The trouble is, there are so many issues out there? How much “leading” does he demand that university leaders do?"

"But then there’s the question of where to stop, which atrocities to condemn. You wouldn’t want a university president to become the equivalent of an outrage-of-the-week blogger."

"Again, my problem is not with university leaders, or business leaders, or church leaders, etc., expressing views, but rather with the idea that this is what they are supposed [emphasis mine] to do."

The coup de grâce: the author says in the P.P.S. that he was still right on this one, this one being a link to an article titled, "Steven Pinker is a psychologist who writes on politics."

I don't see how that's the case. The only way we could agree entirely on those common values is to be entirely homogenous as a group, and that is not the case and in my view, deeply undesirable. (I suppose another way we could agree entirely is to be entirely conformist, but that doesn't seem very attractive either).

> Times have changed, there’s too much lazy tolerance now, and people do need to organize around some common values that isn’t just what is the progressive de jour.

Well that comes across as "I want more of my values in society, not yours because they are wrong". If you gave some reasons for why yours are correct and mine aren't, I'd be interested.

The conflicts are not alike. In Gaza, there is no “good guys”. Everyone has civilian blood on their hands. Everyone is angry. And there are no easy answers that have any hope of achieving peace. Of course the foreign policy positions of our governments are different in each case.

As far as I know, the University of California never issued an official statement on the war in Ukraine. On our campus, the campus leadership issued their own condemnation about a week after the invasion started. I remember thinking that there must be something going on behind the scenes, as the university usually reacts faster.

On the other hand, the university officially condemned the Hamas terrorist attack on October 9, which was the first business day after the attack.

Additionally, Israel called dibs first, that is Palestinian/Arabs could have declared themselves a country as soon as the British mandate ended but chose not to. Instead Israel did first and was attacked by neighboring countries which caused the majority of the Palestinian diaspora.