Free Republic

WHEN WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY founded National Review in 1955 at the age of 29, he lit the fire that sparked the modern conservative movement. Buckley had already achieved notoriety--if not celebrity--with the publication of God and Man at Yale in 1951. He attacked the undergraduate education on offer at Yale for its hostility to Christianity and its adulation of collectivism and sought to dispel the indifference of Yale alumni to their supervisory responsibility, calling on them to grasp the nettle of university governance. Yale was, of course, only the example which laid closest to Buckley's hand. Mutatis mutandis, as Buckley...

THE PRESIDENT of Harvard University is in trouble. Larry Summers, who used to be Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, is guilty of the worst offence possible at an East Coast liberal university. He has committed free thought, based on evidence. Mr Summers pointed out that few if any women reach world-class levels in the hard sciences. He went on to suggest that this might tell us something about the difference between male and female brains.Poor Mr Summers: short of endorsing George Bush, he could not have said anything to make himself more unpopular. It is even possible that he may lose...

Like religious fundamentalists seeking to stamp out the teaching of evolution, feminists stomped Harvard University President Lawrence Summers for mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties remain so heavily male. Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving agenda. This cause can put money in their pockets. Summers's suggestion -- now ignominiously retracted, with groveling, Soviet-show-trial-style apologies -- was that sex discrimination and the reluctance of mothers to work 80 hours a week are not the only...

Harvard President's Comments Underscored the Gender Bias We've Experienced Harvard University President Larry Summers touched off an international furor when he suggested that innate differences between men and women play a role in why there are relatively few women at the top universities in science and mathematics. Summers pointed to statistical "evidence" in the form of standardized test scores, noting that boys score in the top tier more frequently than girls. As academics and scientists across the country criticized these remarks, the media responded with accounts of angry (female) academics, balanced against (female) scientists who support Summers's assertion that differences...

GENDER STUDIES In Victorian times, scientists argued that women's brains were too small to be fully human. On the intelligence scale, researchers recommended classifying human females with gorillas. The great 19th century neuroanatomist Paul Broca didn't see the situation as quite so dire, but he warned his colleagues that women were not capable of being as smart as men, "a difference that we should not exaggerate, but which is nonetheless real." The president of Harvard University suggested that a lack of "innate ability" might help explain why women couldn't keep up with men in fields like math and science …...

Truth and Consequences By Kathleen Parker If I were Harvard President Lawrence Summers -- given Womanhood's reaction to his suggestion that innate gender differences might account for men's higher achievement in math and science -- I'd be sorely tempted at this point to say: "I rest my case." Or, alternatively, "... and the horse you rode in on." Instead, despite having apologized for speaking an unpopular truth, Summers will be the subject of an emergency faculty meeting scheduled Tuesday at which Harvard professors will discuss: What to do about Larry? Right off, I'd say give the man a raise for...

It seems that Larry Summers, a timid man mysteriously president of Harvard, has suggested that men might be better than women at mathematics. He has been beset by the fanged mouselets of academe, and is now busily cringing like a puppy who has wet the rug. We must not mention what the correct do not want to hear. Yet maybe we should. Let us reflect on differences between the sexes: Men are taller, heavier, stronger, more durable, and more enduring. They have higher erythrocyte counts, greater cardiac volume, build muscle faster with exercise, and are more strongly constructed. All of...

If I were Harvard President Lawrence Summers - given Womanhood's reaction to his suggestion that innate gender differences might account for men's higher achievement in math and science - I'd be sorely tempted at this point to say: "I rest my case."

Tha the faculty at Harvard is going mad. It's like the Crucible or something. It's approaching an inquisition. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times: "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...

In his ongoing campaign to squelch the controversy over his remarks about why few women rise to the top in the fields of math and science, Harvard President Lawrence Summers said today he now believes that women are as "calculating as any male mathematician." Mr. Summers, who faces faculty calls for his resignation, said he was also wrong about the female aptitude for science. "Clearly, my experience of the past several weeks has shown that women are genetically equipped to engage in careful scrutiny, dissection and identification of even slight deviations," he said. "Frankly, no further research is needed."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Harvard University President Lawrence Summers faced pressure from some faculty to resign on Wednesday as a controversy over his comments about women evolved into a broader indictment of his leadership. One professor spoke of a brewing "rebellion" against Summers following a meeting of at least 250 undergraduate faculty on Tuesday at which speaker after speaker criticized the Ivy League school chief. "It would not be exaggerated to call this a rebellion," said the professor, who asked to remain anonymous. "It was quite a remarkable atmosphere at the meeting. People who have taught here for decades said...

Harvard University professors confronted president Lawrence H. Summers at a tense meeting yesterday, with several questioning whether he could continue to effectively lead the university after his remarks on women in science brought into public view simmering discontent with his presidency, according to several faculty members who attended the session. 'snip' The dominant theme of the meeting was that Summers's comments on women were a last straw for those faculty members who contend that he has seized too much power, insulted professors and ignored their opinions, and embarrassed Harvard with repeated gaffes ranging from his public spat with prominent African-American...

The PC Wars First Up » Stephen J. Trachtenberg Plus 2 » Richard Cohen Amy Richards Back Page » Eric Weider The controversy over free speech vs. political correctness on campus boiled over again recently, when Harvard president Lawrence Summers mused that more study was needed on the question of how gender differences correlate with the aptitude toward the hard sciences. Summers was forced to apologize repeatedly for what was seen as a decidedly insensitive observation. "First Up" Tucker interviews Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., about the on-going campus PC wars. And on our...

Hysteria -- A functional disturbance of the nervous system, characterized by such disorders as anaesthesia, hyperaesthesia, convulsions, etc., and usually attended with emotional disturbances and enfeeblement or perversion of the moral and intellectual faculties. -- Oxford English Dictionary Forgive Larry Summers. He did not know where he was. Addressing a conference on the supposedly insufficient numbers of women in tenured positions in university science departments, he suggested that perhaps part of the explanation might be innate -- genetically based -- gender differences in cognition. He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not....

Say you are a clever university president named Larry. You have an old friend, Marty, whose own institute is situated just down the road from you. You have a few problems at your university, and when you get an invitation to hash through them at Marty's, you zip right over. After all, the arguments at Marty's are provocative, intense and factual. There is nothing you love better than such rip-roaring exchanges. Besides, some good may come of it. Anything that is debatable is soluble. The Larry in this instance is, of course, Larry Summers of Harvard, former US Treasury secretary...

FORTY-SIX years ago, in "The Two Cultures," C. P. Snow famously warned of the dangers when communication breaks down between the sciences and the humanities. The reaction to remarks by Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, about the differences between men and women was yet another sign of a breakdown that takes Snow's worries to a new level: the wholesale denial that certain bodies of scientific knowledge exist. Mr. Summers's comments, at a supposedly off-the-record gathering, were mild. He offered, as an interesting though unproved possibility, that innate sex differences might explain why so few women are on science and...

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers triggered a national media frenzy when he suggested at an economics conference last Friday that the scarcity of female scientists at elite universities may stem from “innate” differences between the sexes, although two Harvard professors who heard the speech said his remarks have been taken out of context. MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins ’64 said she felt physically ill while listening to Summers’ speech at a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) luncheon on Friday, and left the conference room half-way through the president’s remarks. “For him to say that ‘aptitude’ is the second most important...

Summers in the hot seat Summers in the hot seat Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, suggested the other day that innate differences between the sexes might help explain why relatively few women become professional scientists or engineers. For this, he has been denounced—metaphorically, of course—as a Neanderthal. Alumni are withholding donations. Professors are demanding apologies. Some want him fired. Everyone agrees Summers' remarks were impolitic. But were they wrong? Is it wrong to suggest that biological differences might cause more men than women to reach the academic elite in math and science? To begin with, let's clarify what Summers...

Last Friday at a conference on economics at Harvard, Larry Summers, economist and President of that university ventured to explain the paucity of women at high levels of science and math; it might be due in part to "innate differences" between men and women. Fortunately, it was winter in Cambridge so no fans were in operation, but the hit was palpable. "Innate differences!" Horrors. It would take a master parodist to construct a more Victorian response than that given by Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist. She was "profoundly disturbed" "I felt I was going to be sick." "My heart was...

Ten Harvard College seniors swore to support and defend the U.S. Constitution Wednesday (June 9) as they were commissioned as officers in the U.S. armed forces during a ceremony in Harvard's Tercentenary Theatre.