I am a human evolutionary biologist, the author of T: the Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us (Henry Holt, 2021), an award-winning educator, and a strong advocate for academic freedom. Previously, I co-directed the undergraduate program in Harvard's department of Human Evolutionary biology, where I also taught for two decades. I am a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where I work on issues related to sex and gender, health, psychology, and academic freedom in higher education. I am also an associate in Harvard’s Department of Psychology, in the lab of Steven Pinker. I hold a BA in psychology from Antioch College (1988) and a PhD from Harvard (2004) in Biological Anthropology (which later became Human Evolutionary Biology). My dissertation concerned the hormonal and evolutionary bases of sex differences in spatial ability, advised by Peter Ellison and Stephen Kosslyn. The Wall Street Journal described my book T as “Clear-eyed and crisply written… a gorgeous culmination of an odyssey both professional and personal.” I am working on a new book about the biological bases of differences in male and female sensitivities to cultural changes, and how this information can help support young men in particular. A year and a half after my book T was published in 2021, I resigned from my long career at Harvard, under duress. In this commentary, Harry Lewis (Professor of Computer Science, and previous dean of the college for 8 years) nailed it. My world was crumbling, and I felt isolated on campus. Most friends and colleagues stayed quiet, but here was Professor Lewis, whom I did not know, defending me on his blog: "What is dangerous is not an evolutionary biology faculty member saying that male and female are meaningful categories; it is someone speaking with institutional authority instructing her not to say so. Whatever one thinks about the gender binary and its discontents, no Harvard official should be telling a faculty member that that her defense of it is prohibited." If you want to lear more about what led to my departure, I suggest this podcast (Conversations with Coleman). There's also this article, originally published in The Free Press, this in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, or this post by Jerry Coyne (Emeritus professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago). The bottom line is that Harvard's administration not only failed to support my right to express reasonable scientific views, but actively undermined it. The environment on campus and in my department made it feel impossible for me to carry out my professional responsibilities. I miss teaching and my students every day. The focus in most of my research, writing, and teaching has been on behavioral endocrinology—the relationship among hormones, brain, behavior and environment in humans and other animals, and how it evolved. I am particularly interested in how evolution shapes the intricate interplay between biology and culture, and how this helps to explain sex differences in areas such as in play, education, crime, parenting, and mating strategies. I am also a public advocate for free speech and evidence-based social, educational, and legal policies concerning sex and gender. I was honored recently to receive the Hero of Intellectual Freedom award from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). See the "media" page for links to my publications and appearances, but briefly: In 2024, I gave a TED Talk in Vancouver on the evolutionary and hormonal basis of sex differences in play (TLDR: "boyish" play isn't budding toxic masculinity). My television, radio, and podcast appearances include BBC News, Fox & Friends, Dr. Phil, Joe Rogan and The Drive with Peter Attia, and my work has been featured in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, and Free Press. My work has also been published in academic journals, including Hormones and Behavior, Neuropsychologia, and Archives of Sexual Behavior. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with my husband Alex, son Griffin and cat Lola. I love watching birds, running and biking, Belgian beer, salty snacks and freedom of speech. You can find me on Twitter at @hoovlet, and I'll figure out Instagram and start posting more at carole.hooven. How I got to Harvard, starting with an excerpt from Chapter 1 of T: My journey to Uganda wasn’t exactly a straight line. An interest in human behavior drove me to major in psychology in college. I enjoyed classes like Freud and Jung, Abnormal Psychology, and Personality and Individual Differences. But it wasn’t until my senior year that I had to restrain myself from jumping out of my seat, barely able to contain my excitement about the lecture material. I will never forget that course (Biological Psychology), the professor (Josephine Wilson), and the day she introduced me to neurons and neurotransmitters and how their actions and levels affect all kinds of behavior. I remember her standing tall, raising her outstretched arms above her head, and wiggling her fingers around to bring a neuron and its dendrites—little branches that communicate with other neurons—to life. A new, powerful way to understand the origins of behavior was opening up for me, and it felt tremendously satisfying. I knew I wanted more of that feeling, but graduation loomed and I had no job. These experiences intensified my desire to find the deepest, most powerful explanations for human behavior and converged on one question: how has evolution shaped human nature? Then I read the book that suggested a path I could take to pursue my questions: Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. It wasn’t violence, specifically, that drew me in; it was the approach that the two authors used to investigate large questions about how we got to be the way we are. I decided that I wanted to do what the lead author [Richard Wrangham] did, which was to study chimpanzees to learn more about ourselves and our evolutionary origins. So I quit my job and applied to graduate school. I do not recommend doing things in that order. And that’s how I found myself in the forest on that January day in 1999, catching chimp urine and watching a big male beat up a smaller female while she tried to protect her kids. Their interaction had dramatically exemplified the contrasting patterns of chimp behavior that had already captivated my interest—relatively peaceful, nurturing females and sex-and hierarchy-obsessed aggressive males. The experience of observing wild chimpanzees in Uganda solidified my desire to research the biological basis of human sex differences. It was obvious to me that culture is only part of the explanation. I began my PhD at Harvard in the fall of 1999, defended my dissertation in 2004, and stayed at Harvard to teach and advise undergrads in Human Evolutionary Biology. I stayed on until January 2023, when I felt I could no longer carry out my professional responsibilities. |