January 25, 2005

Summers Storm

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post provides a sane perspective on the tempest created by the remarks of Larry Summers at an academic conference.

"Summers (even in his earlier, unexpurgated form) wasn't saying that no individual woman could be a stellar scientist, or mathematician, or engineer, only that overall one gender might be more inclined in that direction than the other. Indeed, if that did prove to be the case, it would be all the more important for educators at every level to nurture and encourage girls and women with scientific promise, and it would make those who achieve at the highest levels all the more valuable in a modern university, or any modern workforce conscious of the cost of gender disparities. The Summers storm might have been easy to forecast. But it says less, in the end, about the Harvard president than it does about the unwillingness of the modern academy to tolerate the kind of freewheeling inquiry that academics and intellectuals above all ought to prize rather than revile. "

This piece in the NY Times also provides good reporting and discussion of all the factors that may bear on the undeniable fact that far fewer women than men are in the top positions in the hard sciences like mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering. The feminist over-reaction to Summers' comments is predictable and unfortunate. It's sad they feel so angry thus making themselves less credible by doing so.

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