Saturday, February 19, 2005

Lawrence Summers flap, Pt. 3

For those of you that are interested, you can read the entirety of Lawrence Summers' remarks at the at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce here.

For what it's worth, having read Summers' comments, I think this story is even more of a tempest in a teapot than before. Even a cursory reading of Summers' speech will show how loaded with qualifications his remarks were. In fact to the extent that Summers suggest that there are innate differences in ability between the sexes, he says so very obliquely and with huge qualifications.

Summers' remarks also raised the question, at least in my mind, so women are underrepresented in sciences and engineering. So what? As Summers himself points out, white men are underrepresented in the NBA, Catholics in investment banking and Jews in agriculture. And yet there are no efforts by society to correct these imbalances.

1 comment:

Grumpy Old Man said...

I agree.

The real issue for me is the baying of the heresy-hunting feminist hounds, at what's supposed to be a university, where they natter on about "academic freedom," "free inquiry," and "the life of the mind."

All a bunch of Ivy League horse-pukky, to judge from the reaction of the Harvard faculty lynch mob.