After Long Courtship, Harvard Lures Pinker

The path that led renowned cognitive scientist Steven Pinker from MIT to Harvard’s psychology department began with an invitation to eat dinner at Boston’s Green Street Grill.

That this invitation came from two of Harvard’s brightest academic stars helps explain how Harvard pulled off its latest hiring coup.

“I got a call from [DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis] ‘Skip’ Gates and he said, ‘How would you like to have dinner with me and [Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value] Elaine Scarry?’” Pinker says.

Pinker, who is currently a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, will occupy a newly created Mind, Brain, Behavior (MBB) chair in Harvard’s psychology department next year.

Pinker’s many friends in Harvard’s psychology department had often encouraged him to join Harvard’s faculty. He says that this was not the first time the University had tried to recruit him, recalling an offer made by Harvard in 1988.

But according to Pinker, it was this meal that started his drift towards Harvard.

“[Scarry’s work] is an interesting connection between cognitive psychology—what I do—and English literature, and reminded me that Harvard, as a university with experts in every field, would be a very stimulating place,” Pinker says.

Pinker says that Scarry and Gates initially proposed that he join the University’s English department, but that he felt more comfortable in the psychology department.

The announcement earlier this month that Pinker had accepted Harvard’s offer generated excitement among many students and faculty, but also prompted speculation about what convinced him to come.

According to several professors in the psychology department and at Harvard Medical School (HMS), University President Lawrence H. Summers may have played an unusually direct role in persuading Pinker to come.

The president is required to approve all senior faculty appointments, but Summers may have become involved in the process much earlier.

“The rumor is that Summers read Pinker’s works and really enjoyed them and wanted him here,” said Professor of Psychology Alfonso Caramazza.

Pinker says that Summers has read his book, How the Mind Works, and that he has attended events at Summers’s home.

He also says that Summers contacted him earlier this year to encourage him to accept Harvard’s offer.

Summers has expressed a desire to hire younger scholars, and those whose work bridges conventional departmental divisions.

The 48-year-old Pinker, whose work has encompassed a wide range of topics, would seem to fit the bill.

University spokesperson Lucie McNeil says of Summers’s involvement, “He went through the normal selection process with [the Faculty].”

Chair of the Department of Psychology Daniel Schacter declined to comment on the search process.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, this hiring may have broken something of a gentleman’s agreement between Harvard and MIT not to hire prominent faculty away from each other.

But Schacter and Pinker both say they were not aware of any such agreement.

“There’s been lots of hiring going both ways, even in the psychology department,” says Schacter.

Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, also denied that there was any such agreement.

“Faculty are their own people; they aren’t in any sense ‘owned’ by their institutions,” he wrote in an e-mail.

When speculation first arose in February that Harvard would make a bid for Pinker, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department Chair Mriganka Sur expressed dismay at the possibility of losing Pinker.

He said that MIT would do whatever it could to keep Pinker.

“I certainly wish Harvard wouldn’t do this,” he said then.

The mood at MIT last week was somewhat more resigned.

“We’re disappointed, we’re sad to see him go, but we’re not resentful of Harvard,” says Edward Gibson, an associate professor at MIT who has worked closely with Pinker.

Other faculty and staff at MIT echoed Gibson’s feelings, saying that they were sorry to lose Pinker, but understood Harvard’s reasons for making the offer and Pinker’s reasons for accepting it.

The Welcome Wagon

Upriver at Harvard, excitement about Pinker’s impending arrival remains high.

“It’s a major coup for us,” said Caramazza. “I think that Pinker’s coming will strengthen us in every area that needed strengthening.”

Kosslyn, who advised Pinker’s doctoral thesis when Pinker earned his doctorate in psychology at Harvard in 1979, said Pinker would do well in the department.

“He fits squarely in the center of the department,” wrote Kosslyn. “His interests bridge those of just about everyone else on our faculty. He should act as a strong integrative force.”

Pinker’s work has ranged from linguistics to visual cognition to evolutionary psychology.

Professors at Harvard expressed a hope that his interests would not diminish in their breadth.

Pinker’s most recent book, The Blank Slate, was a New York Times best-seller and has fueled controversy in the long-standing “nature versus nurture” debate.

“He has a brilliant and playful mind,” Harvard College Professor Marc D. Hauser wrote in an e-mail. “What I like about Steve’s teaching is that it is always crystal clear, punctuated by good stories and a sense of humor.”

“More personally, as a close friend, I am delighted to have him as my next door neighbor on the 9th floor [of William James Hall]. This is how collaborations are formed,” Hauser wrote.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said in a statement, “His is a keen and capacious intellect, seasoned with wit, shot through with verve, capable of the most extraordinary connections between cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, moral and political thought, and popular culture.”

Pinker says he plans to teach a science Core class called “The Human Mind.”

—Staff writer Nathaniel A. Smith can be reached at nsmith@fas.harvard.edu.