Carl Hart
If we stay focused on data and the real issues, we can tailor our inventions to enhance public health and safety while decreasing the likelihood of racial discrimination.Collection: Health
Skills that are employable or marketable, education, having a stake or meaningful role in society, not being marginalized - all of those things are very important.Collection: Education
Perhaps, for once, we should try interventions that are informed by science and proven to work.Collection: Science
All children will do things that you may not want them to. That's part of parenting.Collection: Parenting
I have a hard time arguing with stupid people.
If we were going to look at how pharmalogical drugs influence crime, we should probably look at alcohol.
You have to be open-minded, and you have to be critical, and you have to let go of your predispositions about what you've been told that doesn't have foundations in evidence.
I think people are curious at some level, and they want to alter their current state of being. I mean, that could be from curiosity, that could be from stress, that can be from some other sort of ailments or problem that they are experiencing or could just be from boredom, but humans have always attempted to alter their consciousness.
My research has taught me many important lessons, but perhaps none more important than this: drug effects, like semesters, are predictable; police interactions with black people are not.
It's not a crime to make a mistake; in fact, it's human. I certainly have made mistakes.
It is my mission to put sensible and evidence-based information above politics and exaggeration.
Teaching university students affords me the opportunity to demonstrate to young adults that they don't have to be perfect to make contributions to their country.
I am certain that my white colleagues, when faced with an emergency situation, wouldn't think twice about calling the police. This, however, may not be the case for their black and Latino students.
It turns out that the term 'diversity' can be anything from black faculty to military veterans. Well, I am both, but have yet to be subjected to discrimination because I'm a veteran.
The way we have been thinking about brain science is that people show you pretty pictures, pretty images, and you think that that tells you something about how they behave. It doesn't.
It takes some courage to say you were wrong.
I went into the military because I didn't get a scholarship, a basketball scholarship I thought that I would get.
I went to college in the Air Force, and I went to college at the University of Maryland, who had college campuses on Air Force bases.
I did most of my Ph.D. in Washington. They used to bring black kids through the lab for tours, and I was one of the few black researchers.
If politicians did care about their constituents, they would work harder to seek out people like me. They don't.
When we make decisions based on factors other than the available empirical evidence, we are less than objective, which means we are no longer acting as scientists.
I am committed to the people who are sick and tired of seeing their tax dollars being used to fund unethical people and corporations.
It is always a good time when I visit the 'Melissa Harris Perry Show' on MSNBC.
I am a drug expert and the father of 3 black males.
As a parent, a scientist, and educator, what I know is that it's always better to provide the education that will help keep my children - all people - safe, even if I don't want them to engage in the behavior.
If drugs are bad, any respectable society should do something to deal with them.
You don't have money, you can't do science. But that's part of the price that I pay.
I'm the only tenured black faculty in the sciences at Columbia, in the middle of Harlem.
Most of the stuff that parades as drug education in this country is just rubbish with no foundation in evidence.
Drug reformers need to be hyper-vigilant. I understand that when you've been oppressed so long, so thirsty for truth, that when someone comes along and gives you a sip of water, you think that they're the savior. But in that water there may be cyanide.
Drug reformers get seduced by politicians who co-opt our language but who make no meaningful change. And when we don't hold politicians accountable, we contribute to harm.
In the mainstream, I'm suspect because I'm black. I have dreadlocks, I have a goatee. I mean, I'm just suspect. In my classroom and at Columbia, I'm not as suspect because it's clear I know what I'm doing, but I am still suspect.
All of my childhood, we were on welfare. My mom received Aid for Families with Dependent Children - welfare. Without that, we wouldn't have had subsidized housing. Most of my childhood, we had a two-bedroom apartment, but eventually we got into the projects, where we had four bedrooms. That was great.
Trump has been - has shown himself to be the most ignorant president that we've ever had. He has shown himself to be the one that disregards law more so than any other president we've had.
When patients reject official advice and proved medicine, they become more susceptible to quackery.
I grew up in the hood in Miami in a poor neighborhood.
We need better public education and more realistic education.
Sleep is probably the most important biological function. If you don't get enough sleep, you can get psychiatric illnesses and all types of different illnesses.
Researchers, treatment providers - we all have a stake in the drug hysteria game.
When you go to jail, you are under the supervision of the state. You are housed with people who are criminals, so that becomes the expectation. People learn to become better criminals in jail and prison.
If you are funding researchers to look primarily for pathology, not surprisingly, that is what they are going to find and report on.
The strange proposition that black intellectuals - regardless of their training - are 'race experts' mainly because they are black is naive and potentially dangerous.
I strongly discourage any intellectuals, regardless of race, from speaking on matters for which they have limited or no expertise.
Too often, ill-informed rhetoric has led to emotional hysteria that obfuscates solid evidence regarding the real problems faced by poor people and, in overwhelmingly great proportions, by black people.
The listening community has the obligation of distinguishing informed opinion from tweets.
One of the things we know about people is that people are not very courageous in general.
The notion that scientists are dispassionate - first of all, that's wrong. Scientists are extremely passionate.
In the hood, you have a problem with somebody, you have to deal with it. The outcome is pretty immediate.
My kids are really into social justice.
Disregard belief systems that aren't based on empirical studies.