Quantcast
Skip to content Skip to footer

Dr Carole Hooven: Cancel culture is a threat to democracy

In the age of social media, some subjects are so incendiary it’s much easier to stay quiet than speak out. But Dr Carole Hooven, an associate at the Harvard Department of Psychology, refuses to be silenced when the stakes are so high, even if the repercussions could lose her friends, her job and her career
Dr Carole Hooven, PhD
Dr Carole Hooven, PhD

Dr Carole Hooven, PhD, is a human evolutionary biologist, author, and award-winning educator. She is nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works on issues related to sex and gender, health, psychology, and academic freedom in higher education, an associate in Harvard’s Department of Psychology, in the lab of Steven Pinker, and an active member of the newly established Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. She is the author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. Follow her on X and Instagram. Visit carolehooven.com.

Cancel culture is a threat to democracy

In the social media age, some subjects are so incendiary it’s much easier to stay quiet than speak out.

Take, for example, sex and gender, transgender sport, and toxic masculinity.

But some conversations are so important they shouldn’t take place in private, even if the repercussions can cost you your friends, your job or your career.

Indeed, for society to move forward, and the rights of everyone to be considered, these conversations have to happen in public.

Dr Carole Hooven, associate at the Harvard Department of Psychology and author of “Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us”, has fearlessly spoken up on the biggest issues around biology and behaviour. And it has had profound professional and personal consequences.

In the first part of our exclusive interview (part 2 on Sex Difference Denial is here and part 3 on The Anti-Masculinity Movement harming boys and young men is here) Dr Hooven explains exactly what it feels like to be “cancelled” after she was forced to take a leave of absence from Harvard following comments she made on US television, how even her most trusted colleagues deserted her in her hour of need, and why a cancel culture society, in which anyone can be ostracised from their career, job and friends for expressing not just an opinion, but established facts, is a real and genuine threat to a truly open, free and progressive liberal democracy.


If you’re reading this, you are among the first people to discover Unfiltered. It means you’re ahead of the game. And it means you are with us from the start of our journey as we guide you through the greatest era of health and wellness innovation the world has ever known. A journey we’re now on together, because we want our community of users to have their say and help us shape our editorial agenda. So thank you for joining us, for being inquisitive and for being someone who can say “I was there from the very beginning”.
Joe Warner, Editor-in-Chief, Unfiltered

Leave a comment

Sign Up to Our Newsletter

Be the first to know the latest updates

[yikes-mailchimp form="1"]