Posted on 05/16/2005 3:39:55 PM PDT by neverdem
Lawrence H. Summers, the embattled president of Harvard University, said today that the university would spend at least $50 million over the next decade on initiatives to recruit, support and promote women and members of minorities on its faculty.
The financial commitment was among a number of new efforts endorsed by Dr. Summers, who has been the object of criticism for his management style and for remarks he made in January suggesting that "intrinsic aptitude" might be a factor behind the low numbers of women in science and engineering.
Dr. Summers also backed specific proposals by two committees he appointed in February to consider ways to increase the number of women and members of minorities among Harvard's professors, especially in the sciences and engineering.
Among the initiatives were additional money to support the salaries of female and minority scholars recruited by the university, the mentoring of junior faculty members and stopping the clock on tenure for parental leave. Dr. Summer also said he would establish a senior administrative post to foster diversity on the Harvard faculty.
The reports suggested that Harvard had fallen behind other American universities in expanding the gender and racial makeup of its faculty.
"In spite of more than three decades of concern, Harvard has made only limited progress in its efforts to create a genuinely diverse faculty," the committee members said in both reports.
"Women and minorities remain significantly underrepresented in relation not just to their proportions in the broader population," the committees said, "but in comparison to their presence in the student body of Harvard's 10 Schools, and, in many cases, to their numbers in the pool of Ph.D.s in individual academic fields."
The committees were created in response to the uproar on the campus and elsewhere over Dr. Summers' remarks about women in science and engineering during a conference in January.
The controversy set off a broader debate about Dr. Summers' management style, his treatment of colleagues and a perception among many faculty members that he lacked respect for them. In March, the faculty voted, 218 to 185, to approve a resolution expressing a lack of confidence in his leadership. The Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body, has stood by Dr. Summers.
Even before his remarks in January, some faculty members had grown concerned about the lack of women in their ranks and a decline in offers of tenured professorships to women during Dr. Summers's tenure. Last year, only 4 of 32 professors offered tenure in the faculty of arts and science were women.
Lawrence H. Summers, the embattled president of Harvard University, said today that the university would spend at least $50 million over the next decade on initiatives to recruit, support and promote women and members of minorities on its faculty.
(like Conservatives?)
calling Professor Churchill, Professor Churchill please...
Another victory for the ThoughtPolice.
They've got a firm grip on his 'nads, as long as he stays there.
I got three paragraphs into this and still found no reference to "qualifications" as a requirment to be a faculty member. Should I have read further?
The only "diversity" they are really lacking on their faculty is Conservatives.
Hey Larry--it doesn't hurt if you stand still. Don't....move....a muscle....
Noooo...nothing that radical. What he means is that he will hire a liberal woman, a liberal hispanic, a liberal black, a liberal gay, a liberal lesbian, a liberal bisexual, a liberal transgender, a liberal questioning (we don't want to miss anyone), a liberal .....whoever else you can think of.
I'll bet the $50 million would have been substantially less had the Harvard administration and faculty had to pay it. Instead, the students/donors/taxpayers will foot the bill for the dumbing down of the school.
There goes the neighborhood. I guess Summers' desire to keep his job was more important than standing on principle.
I'll believe it when I see Professor Laurence Tribe step
aside in favor of a half black,halg Indian lesbian.
Hot Diggety!
Where do I cash in? I'm as 'diverse' as they come. :)
Yup, every "diversity" but the one that matters: intellectual. Orwellian, ain't it?
LOL! Wow! Now, they've got not only Socialists and Communists on the faculty, they've expanded to Trotskyists, Maoists, and the Khmer Rouge, too!
GRRRREAT going, you east coast Hah-vahd elitist swine!
Excellent point. We should start an affirmative action program for non-leftists on college faculties, for example, libertarians, conservatives and Southern Baptists.
I think I saw it on FR.
When compared to their average SAT scores they were even more under-represented.
Nope, conservatives don't count. But Nancy Hopkins (the affirmative action MIT professor who started the whole fuss) knew exactly what she was doing with her couldn't breathe, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up" remarks to the press. This is the leftist SOP with institutions: create a firestorm of criticism and protest about some situation and use it as a battering ram to force that institution to take far larger steps than would be warranted even if the original provocation were really a problem (sometimes they are, sometimes they are not). This is how universities, corporations, governments, etc. have been harassed and bludgeoned into accepting ever more of the leftist agendas.
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