(Harvard President) Summers releases debated transcript (on women/science)

[pmbryant]

This hit the news last night, and I'm surprised to see it hasn't been posted yet here. (I did a search and couldn't find anything about it.)

From the Boston Globe: Feb 18 2005

Summers releases debated transcript

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | February 18, 2005

Facing mounting pressure from critics on campus, Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers gave in yesterday to professors who demanded that he release the transcript of controversial remarks he made on women in science at an economics conference last month.

In a letter to the faculty explaining why he released the transcript after refusing to do so for more than a month, Summers implied he does not plan to concede to his fiercest critics, who want him to resign. He also received crucial support from Harvard's governing corporation yesterday.

Still, Summers acknowledged that the transcript, in which he talked about the ''intrinsic aptitude" of men and women, may prove damaging to him.

''The issue of gender difference is far more complex than comes through in my comments, and my remarks about variability went beyond what the research has established," he wrote in his most detailed admission yet of errors he made in a Jan. 14 presentation to a National Bureau of Economic Research meeting.

...

More: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/02/18/summers_releases_debated_transcript/

Full transcript of Summers' Jan remarks: http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html

Perhaps the most relevant passage:

So 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. 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.

So Summers appears to have indeed said what it was reported that he said: He claimed that "intrinsic aptitude" may be an explanation for the lack of women in top science and engineering jobs. And he discounted discrimination and socialization.

--Peter

[Demeter]

1. All This Proves

Is that Summers has NO aptitude (nor appropriate education) for the position to which he was mistakenly hired.

[pmbryant]

2. Plenty of others appear to think so

For instance, a significant part of the Harvard faculty seem to share your thoughts, based on reports of a faculty meeting from earlier this week: http://pmbryant.typepad.com/b_and_b/2005/02/harvard_preside.html

--Peter

[LinuxInsurgent]

13. amen.

[pmbryant]

3. From DailyKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/18/94524/5350

The transcript makes clear that either due to his utter lack of sensibility, the charitable interpretation, or, because he is a sexist whose prejudices have clouded his judgment, my belief, Summers is unfit for the position of President of Harvard.

Right now, Harvard is standing by him. Let's see how long that lasts. Hopefully, not long.

[Syrinx]

4. God forbid a University president lead a provocative discussion

"Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said. But I think we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can. That's why I think conferences like this are very, very valuable. Thank you."

[LinuxInsurgent]

6. yeah...

and those that compared AFricans to Chimpanzees via "Skull size comparisons" also Provoked a "provocative discussion".

Hey...let's give The Bell Curve a fair hearing...it could provide a "provocative discussion".

Sometimes racism...is RACISM..pure and simple...

and sometimes ignorant sexism...is ignorant sexism.

There are morons in Academia too..

[pmbryant]

7. "provocative"?

God forbid that we criticize a University President with a very poor record of hiring women, for insinuating that women are innately inferior at science.

God forbid that we criticize a University President who appears to belive that women may be innately inferior at science and who also casually dismisses that idea that discrimination plays a significant role, despite its long, shameful history and the huge amounts of evidence to the contrary.

God forbid that we criticize a University President who appears to have extremely little concept of the experiences of his own faculty and who appears to have so little regard for the reputation of his establishment.

The poor University President is being oppressed. Somebody save him!

--Peter

[Syrinx]

8. oh please

Nobody said Summers was being oppressed. But this whole discussion makes the Left look silly. The man was simply trying to provoke discussion; he asked to be contradicted.

[pmbryant]

9. He was contradicted long before he started talking

Fortunately, he seems to have recognized it: http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/facletter.html

Though my NBER remarks were explicitly speculative, and noted that "I may be all wrong," I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields. I especially regret the backlash directed against individuals who have taken issue with aspects of what I said. In this University, people who disagree with me - or with anyone else - should and must feel free to say so. I know of no community as committed to free inquiry as this one, and no institution with a greater responsibility to uphold it.

As I now know better than I did a month ago, the matters I discussed at NBER are the subject of intense debate across a range of disciplines. Colleagues from these fields have taken time to educate me further. My January remarks substantially understated the impact of socialization and discrimination, including implicit attitudes - patterns of thought to which all of us are unconsciously subject. The issue of gender difference is far more complex than comes through in my comments, and my remarks about variability went beyond what the research has established. These are dynamic areas of inquiry, which will no doubt continue to engage scholars in the years ahead.

But anyone who could have missed all the evidence in hand before he spoke, especially given his poor previous record, probably does not deserve to be in the position he is in. But that is now up to Harvard to decide.

(By the way, plenty of people have suggested over the past few weeks that Summers is being oppressed by being so harshly criticized for his comments. I am glad to see that at least he doesn't agree with those people.)

--Peter

[spooky3]

12. well put. He's "oppressed" in the same sense that Pat Robertson

complains that Christians are treated so badly in this country.

[spooky3]

11. If he wanted simply to "provoke discussion" he would have accurately

described the literature, which does NOT show what he claimed in the remarks in the transcript, or at the very least, admitted that he does not know what the literature says and asked someone who does to inform him.

His comments reveal thinly veiled sexism, and arrogance (in speaking as if he is an authority about matters about which he has no expertise) and poor academic scholarship to boot. This alone should disqualify him from his current post, but there is other evidence of discrimination in hiring and treatment of women and minorities, and poor leadership. I somehow think Harvard has the resources to find a more highly qualified President, and should not have to tolerate a second rate scholar who is uninformed and likes it that way.

[ECH1969]

14. Sorry

But, it is wrong to degrade women which was exactly what this guy was doing. The reality is that in many if not most ways women are superior to men.

[Blue to the bone]

17. I feel degraded............

........by that fact.

[LinuxInsurgent]

5. "intrinsic aptitude"

otherwise known as pseudo-biological determinism...applied more commonly to our blacker human beings, as a justification of explaining their ineligibility for certain human tasks.

Anyone else remember those diagrams that showed African's skulls as being the closest to the Chimpanzees, followed by the Asians, Indians, and then finally the White Man (who was the farthest from the Chimpanzee)? This is the SAME OLD SHIT...except now it's about women vs. men.

He acknowledges socialization and continuing discrimination are factors (so at least he's not totally screwy)...but he relegates them to "lesser factors"...and upholds the view that biological determinism is what really decides "aptitude".

Can we fire Summers and send him along with The Bell Curve authors...into the trash bin of racist pseudo-science?

[pmbryant]

10. Charles Murray

Alas, the Bell Curve authors, at least the one still alive, is not exactly in the trash bin of racist pseudo-science. He works for some right-wing think tank and had an op-ed on the Summers matter published in the NY Times last month.

Otherwise, I completely agree. "This is the SAME OLD SHIT."

Summers has backtracked in a big way. Is it enough to save his job? Or is just enough to reveal that he doesn't deserve the job?

:shrug:

--Peter

[Blue to the bone]

15. Hang him by his balls......

.........bet that would give him a lesson in an 'intrinsic difference' between men and women.

[ECH1969]

16. There is an 'intrinsic difference'

Women are smarter, stronger, and better then men.

[diamond14]

18. helllloooo lawrence...meet Mary Sue Coleman, President U of Michigan

http://www.umich.edu/pres/