Harvard Faculty to Lawrence Summers: Waaaaah!

CNN is reporting that members of the Harvard faculty confronted president Lawrence Summers over his remarks at a conference on women and minorities in the sciences. (See my previous posts on this tempest in a teapot here and here.) Apparently some even questioned whether he should remain as president of the university.

My Dad has a saying that he's fond of and that I picked up. I haven't had occasion to use in quite some time, but it's a propos here. These people are holding up their thumb to the sky and insisting the sun does not exist.

Would these same faculty members want their daughters to have to run track against the boys? Or play volleyball? Or soccer? Or basketball?

Of course not. Why not?

Because they would get clobbered.

Why?

I can't believe I even have to write this, but for the Harvard faculty out there, I'll write slowly:

Because - men - and - women - are - different.

This is a fact. You can look it up.

Now, does this mean that we shouldn't encourage women to participate in every field of human endeavour?

Absolutely. (Just kidding. I wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Women are underrepresented in certain fields. If the education establishment decides that one of its goals is to increase their representation, don't you think they would do a better job of devising strategies for attaining that goal if they talked honestly about the problem instead of just insisting that girls are boys with boobs?

And, honestly, does anyone think that we are denying any opportunities to girls in the United States in this day and age? In Somalia? Definitely. In The United States? Definitely not.