Posted on 02/17/2005 10:11:47 PM PST by neverdem
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 17 - Bowing to pressure from his faculty, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, on Thursday released a month-old transcript of his contentious closed-door remarks about the shortage of women in the sciences and engineering. The transcript revealed several provocative statements by Dr. Summers about the "intrinsic aptitude" of women, the career pressures they face and discrimination within universities.
Dr. Summers's remarks, which have only been described by others until now, have fueled a widening crisis on campus, with several professors talking about taking a vote of no confidence on the president next week. That idea alone is unprecedented at Harvard in modern times.
Among his comments to a conference of economists last month, according to the transcript, Dr. Summers, a former secretary of the United States Treasury, compared the relatively low number of women in the sciences to the numbers of Catholics in investment banking, whites in the National Basketball Association and Jews in farming.
He theorized that a "much higher fraction of married men" than married women were willing to work 80-hour weeks to attain "high powered" jobs. He said racial and sex discrimination needed to be "absolutely, vigorously" combated, yet he argued that bias could not entirely explain the lack of diversity in the sciences. At that point, the Harvard leader suggested he believed that the innate aptitude of women was a factor behind their low numbers in the sciences and engineering.
"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Dr. Summers said, according to the transcript.
"I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them," he added.
Over and over in the transcript, he made clear that he might be wrong in his theories, and he challenged researchers to study his propositions.
He also urged research on "the quality of marginal hires" to the faculty when efforts to diversify are under way. How many of these hires, he asked, have "turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search?" Or are "plausible compromises" that are not unreasonable additions to the faculty? And "how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards"?
Several Harvard professors said they were more furious after reading the precise remarks, saying they felt he believed women were intellectually inferior to men.
Everett I. Mendelsohn, a professor of the history of science, said that once he read the transcript, he understood why Dr. Summers "might have wanted to keep it a secret."
"Where he seems to be off the mark particularly is in his sweeping claims that women don't have the ability to do well in high-powered jobs," said Professor Mendelsohn, part of a faculty group that sharply criticized Dr. Summers's leadership at a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday. "There's an implication that they've taken themselves out of that role. But he brings forward no evidence."
Howard Georgi, a physics professor who has been part of a successful effort in his department to recruit women for tenured positions, said, "It's crazy to think that it's an innate difference." He added: "It's socialization. We've trained young women to be average. We've trained young men to be adventurous."
After releasing the 7,000-word transcript, Dr. Summers said in a letter to the faculty that he should "have spoken differently on matters so complex" and that he had "substantially understated the impact of socialization and discrimination."
"The issue of gender difference is far more complex than comes through in my comments," he wrote.
The senior member of Harvard's governing corporation, James Houghton, released a letter after the transcript was made public, offering praise and support for Dr. Summers.
In recent weeks, the Summers controversy has led to a wider debate among academics about not only sex differences but also the state of campus political correctness - with Dr. Summers's supporters insisting that a left-wing cabal on the faculty was seeking to bring down his presidency over his remarks.
Among his critics on the faculty, the current outrage against him amounts to a culmination of reaction to three years of sharp-edged remarks, actions and displays of attitude that to these professors have been divisive and unworthy of one of the world's leading universities. Dr. Summers gained notoriety several months into the job by offending a leading professor of black studies at Harvard, Cornel West, who promptly decamped to Princeton University.
Yet some Harvard professors and leaders said that the critics were focusing too narrowly on remarks that were meant to be private and provocative, and that they were losing sight of Dr. Summers's accomplishments at the university.
"My primary response to the transcript is that President Summers has profoundly apologized," said Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economics professor who is a strong supporter of Dr. Summers. "At this point the university will be much better served by looking forward rather than by parsing his comments."
After the transcript was issued, Dr. West volunteered his reaction to the latest imbroglio.
"I've been praying for the brother, hoping he would change," Dr. West said in an interview. "It's clear he hasn't changed. I feel bad for Harvard as an institution and as a great tradition. It was good to see the faculty wake up. The chickens have come home to roost."
While Harvard professors plan to convene Tuesday to discuss the transcript and Dr. Summers's leadership, and some have spoken of a vote of no confidence, it is the Harvard Corporation that has decisive influence over Dr. Summers's fortunes. It stood behind him on Thursday.
Several female scientists who were at the National Bureau of Economic Research forum and who expressed outrage at Dr. Summers's remarks there said they felt vindicated. Critics had accused them of misinterpreting him and overreacting out of political correctness.
"I'm glad his words are finally out there," said Shirley Malcom, who grew up in segregated Alabama and is now the director of education for the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. "Because so many of us have been accused of implying that he said things he did not, and now people can actually judge for themselves."
Sara Rimer reported from Cambridge for this article, and Patrick D. Healy from Albany.
I haven't read the transcript. I'm a white male chauvinist devil. This is all about PC.
Poor Summers. He's being hoisted on the petard that comes with being a Democrat.
The so-called great universities of this nation are, apparently, headed into a policy-driven decline just like the so-called major broadcast networks. In their blindness, they stumble into progressive failure.
But it will take much longer for Harvard, Yale and Princeton to fail, than ABC, CBS and NBC. Why? The networks do not have any endowments, to keep them running when they aren't doing the jobs for which they were created.
Congressman Billybob
These fools are living in a fools' world.
Anyone who thinks that women and men have exactly the same kinds of aptitudes and intelligence are hiding from reality. Of course there are some greatly scientific minds among women, and some wonderful nurturer types among men.
But taken as general populations, men and women have their differences. This used to be understood. Now people have gone insane. Now girls are taught in school that to have as their goal in life to be good wives and mothers is nothing more than enslavement; girls should aspire to be soccer players, attorneys, and engineers. Boys are taught to repress their competitive spirit and natural male energy, and instead train to be nurses, seamstresses and day care providers.
This is the elites example of a "show trial". Not many of these useless ivory tower clods could survive a battle of wits unless their opponent was forbidden to resist.
You might also wonder any one of these little dog-turds would ever take Prof. Churchill to task on his stupid comments.
You can see that they now believe that policy should drive science, rather than the other way around.
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
there's a low number relatively of Catholics in investment banking for the same reason every other motel or foodmart or gas station is owned by Indians or Pakistanis.....
overall, Summers sounds more and more like a Nazi.....
Larry finally called the good Dr. West's bluff and West decamped for Central Jersey CC thus earning the lefties' contempt. Add to that the fact that he's spoken in favor of ROTC returning to campus and he's in trouble even without this pretty innocent comment. And notice how he even made sure to inoculate himself with the standard PC platitudes ("I hope I'm wrong about this. . ." "We need to combat inequality . . .").
Thanks for the blog!
hate to nitpick but a nurse is not a daycare worker or a seamstress....
as a matter of fact, lots of men are becoming nurses...mostly when they are older....when they lose their typical "male" job....for one reason.....the money.....
I'm a reasonably intelligent woman. I did my graduate work in neuroscience at a major university medical school. When I took ordinary med school courses like physiology, biochemistry, and anatomy, side by side with the male medical students, I did fine. But when I got into neuroanatomy I found that I didn't have the mental ability to rotate the brain in three dimensions and see all of its different components and pathways as sectioned and from various angles. Could not do it well enough to be a professional. Could not. To this day I can't do that sort of thing. I'm a good carpenter too but I can't cope an interior dentillated cornice molding to save my life, either. It's the same principle and I can't do it. My brain won't work that way. So I went into neuropharmacology/physiology instead and I was fine. You can count the number of good female neuroanatomists on the fingers of one hand and have a couple of fingers left over.
Hey! I was a math major. I bet I can work that one out ....
The quotes of what he said sound reasonable and do not sound disrespectful.
Keep spinnin', Grandpa. It's cold out, and we need the electricity.
Considering that the Male to Female ratio at a Star Trek convention is like 50 to 1, he might have a point there.
No doubt there are always exceptions to every general rule. But, generally speaking, women make better mothers than men.
And men make better cops than women.
And you outsmart me in the science field, no doubt about that.
I could show you what math really is.
I am serious - I killed myself, for years, trying to explain something that can only be seen.
It is art...if you can see it.
It's time--way PAST time, to be accurate--for someone to stand up and tell these morons to go jump in the lake. Everytime someone on a liberal hate-list opens their mouth, liberals are looking for something to hammer them with. When they find some irrelevant crap like this, the person always apologizes, which is the WORST thing they could possibly do. An apology to liberals is like pouring blood into shark-filled waters. (Remember Trent Lott?)
Someone has to be the first to laugh in their pathetic faces and turn and walk away. It's been made perfectly clear that the majority in this country doesn't share their goofy worldviews, but they're still allowed to dictate as if they have a mandate because no one will stand up to them.
MM
This poor man. He said nothing wrong at all, IMO.
The scientific fact is that our brains and men's brains have different *tendencies* -- and the issue of family/mothering interrupting women's careers is undeniable.
If what they quoted was the worst he said, then this "outrage" is absurd. Typical of leftist thinking -- we must at least pretend that everyone is "equal" in all things.
Sad.
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