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Ex-Treasury Secretary Summers warns of risks 'greater than any since aftermath of 9/11', reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard # Subprime crisis in full # Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Prepare for the crunch Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned that the United States may be heading into recession as the biggest victim to date of the sub-prime mortgage debacle was humiliatingly sold for a token sum in Germany. Traders are braced for another week of turmoil after the near breakdown of America's $2,200bn (£1,100bn) market for commercial paper. "It would be far too premature to judge this crisis over," Mr Summers said. "I would...

All Things Considered, January 19, 2005 · Last Friday, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers suggested that innate differences between men and women might be one reason there are fewer women in the fields of science and engineering. More than 50 Harvard professors signed a letter protesting his statement, and alumnae have threatened to withhold donations. Summers has apologized, but commentator and psychological researcher Drew Westen says that apology might be unwarranted. (Audio at link.)

The Iowa-based ACT is trumpeting its latest college entrance examination scores as improved but a closer examination of the test results reveals them to be pretty pathetic. “National ACT scores rose significantly in 2006,” the organization claims. “The average ACT composite score for the U. S. high school graduating class of 2006 was 21.1, up from 20.9 last year.” “Scores were higher for both males and females and for students across virtually all racial/ethnic groups.” This year, 1.2 million students took the test, on which 32 was the highest score they could possibly attain. Few did. It gets worse. “For...

Courtesy of Ben A. Barres NOW AND THEN Ben A. Barres as Barbara, age 34; and as Ben at 42. Perhaps it is inevitable that Ben A. Barres would have strong opinions on the debate over the place of women in science. Dr. Barres has a degree in biology from M.I.T., a medical degree from Dartmouth and a doctorate in neurobiology from Harvard. He is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. And until his surgery a decade ago, his name was Barbara, and he was a woman. Now he has taken his unusual perspective to the current issue of...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 6/24 and 6/25/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.Sunday Shows for 6-25-06 ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: What is wrong with these Democrats?  We hand them the election on a silver platter and they just screw it up!Bush has had two good weeks - it's time to bring out the big guns and knock that fool down a peg Topics: Iraq Withdrawal?: In a pair of exclusive...

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student. The three backers of the foundation that,...

Harvard needed Larry Summers. The board's failure to stand by him suggests its members don't know what it takes to lead a great university. For the past three decades, however, Harvard's reputation for preeminence has not always reflected reality in Cambridge. Who now thinks Harvard is better in engineering than MIT or Caltech? Who thinks Harvard's Law School, hobbled by rancorous dissent, is better than Yale's, Virginia's, or Stanford's? Its Philosophy Department, once the home of William James, C.I. Lewis, and W.V.O. Quine, is now typically ranked below departments at Michigan and Pittsburgh.

Professor Ruth R Wisse: Anti-Semitism was ‘one of the factors at play’ in president’s ouster..... Was the ouster of Harvard’s first Jewish president anti-Semitic in its effect if not its intent? On a campus with a painful history of anti-Semitism, most professors—including some of Lawrence H. Summers’ most vocal supporters­—vigorously reject the charge that Summers’ faith had any connection to his downfall. Yet the suspicion landed in Monday’s Boston Globe, where columnist Alex Beam quoted professor Ruth R. Wisse as asking, “Was anti-Semitism the driving engine of this coup?” Summers’ Judaism entered the spotlight a year into his tenure, when...

Frustrated by these and other attacks in the national media that are painting them as reactionary, lazy, radical, and worse, professors are pondering whether to launch a counter-offensive........ The episodes that drove the Faculty to oust its president mainly took place behind closed doors. But professors are facing a backlash in the court of public opinion­, as the response to the resignation drains ink barrels across the country. A piece in The Washington Times called Lawrence H. Summers’ opponents “the Lilliputians guarding their miserable little nests of selfish indifference.” The editor in chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, wrote...

The president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, announced this week that he will resign from his position at the end of this academic year. This became almost inevitable after he made a speech last winter claiming "innate differences" between the sexes may well explain why more men succeed in math and sciences than do women. Not the most radical statement in history, perhaps, but bold enough to make him a hated figure on campuses and a punching bag for radical feminists. I don't really know if there is a different aptitude for science between men and women and don't particularly...

February 22nd, 2006 The American left, long in decline, has shored up its base, definitively seizing the high ground of American academia. The resignation of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard University, the nation’s oldest, and the world’s richest and most prestigious university, marks a significant coup d’etat for the left. A faction, only a plurality within one segment of the university, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has proven its ability to drive from office a brilliant and energetic leader who had been committed to pushing Harvard a little bit back toward the political center. The breaking point began...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The resignation of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard turns the spotlight on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which has consecrated more time and energy to his ouster than to any other project of the past five years. Until now, all blame has been leveled at the president: "Fear and manipulation have been used to govern maliciously," charged one professor, who has since been awarded with a deanship. But now that these cowering professors have successfully unseated their president, scrutiny will quite rightly be leveled at them. What do they gain from their victory, and what does...

Clinton man forced from Harvard helm February 23, 2006 NEW YORK: A growing rebellion by Harvard dons has toppled Lawrence Summers as president of the oldest and most prestigious university in the US. Facing a no-confidence vote by the faculty next week, the former Treasury secretary to Bill Clinton announced on Tuesday he would step down at the end of the academic year after five turbulent years at the helm. The revolt was triggered by his suggestion at an economics seminar that women's "intrinsic aptitude" might explain why so few women became professors of mathematics and science. He later apologised...

DRENCHED IN controversy over his disputes with some members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers resigned yesterday. He will step down at the end of the academic year, closing the book on a contentious phase of Harvard's history.

The American left, long in decline, has shored up its base, definitively seizing the high ground of American academia. The resignation of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard University, the nation’s oldest, and the world’s richest and most prestigious university, marks a significant coup d’etat for the left. A faction, only a plurality within one segment of the university, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has proven its ability to drive from office a brilliant and energetic leader who had been committed to pushing Harvard a little bit back toward the political center. The breaking point came when Summers dared...

A PLURALITY of one faculty has brought about an academic coup d'etat against not only Harvard University president Lawrence Summers but also against the majority of students, faculty, and alumni. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which forced Summers's resignation by voting a lack of confidence in him last March and threatening to do so again on Feb. 28, is only one component of Harvard University and is hardly representative of widespread attitudes on the campus toward Summers. The graduate faculties, the students, and the alumni generally supported Summers for his many accomplishments. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes,...

The National Organization for Women calls for the resignation of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who has failed to lead the prominent (and previously all-male) university toward true inclusion of women. His recent comments generated a firestorm of response from Harvard/Radcliffe women who were outraged that he would embarrass Harvard with such a public demonstration of sexism and ignorance. "Summers' suggestion that women are inferior to men in their ability to excel at math and science is more than an example of personal sexism, it is a clue to why women have not been more fully accepted and integrated into...

The 27th president of Harvard University is stepping down from his post amid growing controversy.

I write to let you know that, after considerable reflection, I have notified the Harvard Corporation that I will resign as President of the University as of June 30, 2006. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to have served Harvard in this role, and I will treasure the continuing friendship and support of so many exceptional colleagues and students at Harvard.

Embattled Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers announced today that he will step down at the end of this academic year, ending one of the shortest tenures in the university's history. In a posting on the university website, Summers, the former secretary of the Treasury, said he will resign as of June 30. "Working closely with all parts of the Harvard community, and especially with our remarkable students, has been one of the great joys of my professional life," he said in the open letter to the Harvard community. "However, I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments...