By giving up the study of sociology in favor of playing the patriarchal game by its own rules, the logic runs, women risk achieving marginal higher wages at the cost of dismantling the apparatus of social justice.
The difficulty here is that the "apparatus of social justice" has never produced any, nor is it likely to, being a facade of high-sounding jargon laid over a structure of pure resentment. It is not even sociology as that putative science was originally intended; frail as that was, they've managed to corrupt and degrade its objective pretensions in favor of a thin veneer covering rage and naked force.
The real reason behind the horrified gasping at Sommers' comment is, I am afraid, rather simple: sociology is easy and engineering is not, and despite a trendy denial in the liberal arts departments everyone who is remotely acquainted with college curricula knows it. That might not be an easy sell at Oberlin but every engineering major at A&M is nodding his or her head. Most of them don't have time for trigger warnings and safe spaces. Differential equations don't care about your feelings.
I think, too, that campus radicalism is reaching for another heyday largely because it was rewarded by accession to the highest offices in the land in the 0bama administration, and a new generation might be forgiven for the conviction that effortless screeching leads to political power, and that that trumps the ability to build a bridge or invent a vaccine. Nor, the author's wishes despite, are they likely to be amenable to reason when raw violence works so much better.
That is a superb and deeply insightful post; well articulated.