Ward Churchill and the President of Harvard? Who should be fired?

[JVS]

Neither, both, Pres of Harvard, Ward. Pick one, explain why.

For those who forgot: "January 14th, 2004: At a conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Lawrence Summers proposed that innate genetic differences between the sexes may be one explanation for why fewer women succeed in math and science careers."
http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2826&category_id=31

[s-cubed]

1. Neither

I believe in free speech. I think both were off the mark, and injudicious in their choice of words, but they still have a right to speak out, and others have the right to criticize them. But neither one rises to the level of being so egregious that they should be fired.

I'm glad to ACLU is taking Churchill's case.

I have a personal perspective on Summers" remarks, as I studied engineering at a time when less that 1/2% of all engineers were women, and I got a PhD in engineering in 1979, which does make me a pioneer. I hope this gives some validity to my opinion.

Summers is right to raise the issue of women in science & technology, but he ought to be asking what are the impediments to success. There has been much research on this, and as a university head he should know about the reaseach and to ask what could be done to remove some of the barriers. He also was rather stupid in not acknowledging that many women have been quite successful, despite the obstacles, including many of his own employees and many of those in the audience.

That said, women are not men, and vice versa. In the past ten years, we have - finally - begun to understand that medical research must be done on women as well as men. For example, the symptoms women display when having a heart attack are often quite different from the "standard" ones men display. The generally accepted symptoms for depression are based more on those of women, not men, to the detriment of male suffereers. In addition, there has been some intriguing research into how the brains of the two sexes are different. I think this kind of research should continue. I am not afraid of truth, and I believe this might lead to better understanding of how people learn. Perhaps if we understood the differences, we might have better education.

We should not ignore the fact of difference, and we should continue to do research to understand the differences, whether they be medical, psychological, neurological, academic, sociological, etc. On the other hand, my understanding is that also all human traits have more much variation within one sex, than variation between the sexes. For example, the average height of men in the US is greater than the average height of women. Yet, if you plot the two distributions on the same graph, they overlap substantially. It may be that one sex or the other has some kind of intellectual ability that on average is slightly greater than that of the other sex. However, that should not mean that the "weaker" sex is prohibited from that endeavor, given the great overlap in abilities. If I were organizing a basketball team and had two players of equal atheleticism, I'd pick the 6'5" woman over the 5'6" man every time. Similarly, I'd hire a superior woman scientist any day over a less able man, but I would not make any a prior assumptions about ability based on sex. Stereotypes are harmful:truth is liberating.

[K-W]

2. Niether.

I dont think either man did anything near deserving of being fired.