<p>"The only black member of the Harvard Corporation, the university's seven-member governing board, said yesterday that he was resigning over disagreements with Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers."</p>
<p>some more fallout, I guess a ripple effect of what happened last semester</p>
<p>some more fallout, I guess a ripple effect of what happened last semester</p>
<p>What happened last semester?</p>
<p>yeah, i would also like to know!</p>
<p>Summers said something that others interpreted to be sexist against women. I didn't really think it was that bad though....people just took it too far</p>
<p>people get so touchy.</p>
<p>for those who didn't read about this last semester, the Harvard Crimson has an entire section that can bring you up to date!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/summers.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/summers.aspx</a></p>
<p>the best story in all of this is that the admissions office doctored a photo of the campus newspaper in the admissions viewbook to remove an unflattering headline about summers.</p>
<p>see "college covers up summers' bad news in brochure":
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508142%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508142</a></p>
<p>And, as usual, Harvard killed Yale, Princeton and Stanford with cross-admits. The sustained assault by the leftists and extreme feminists failed to gain traction with applicants. In fact, female admits enrolled at a slightly higher rate than male admits!!</p>
<p>Stanley Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies put it best:</p>
<p>"It used to be the case that of students who were admitted to Harvard and Princeton or Harvard and Yale, seven of 10 would choose to go to Harvard," Katz says. "It may be more now. There is a tendency for the academically best to skew even more to Harvard. We just get our socks beat off in those cases."</p>
<p>"Two graduating seniors were tossing a frisbee on the bank of the Charles River shortly after eight oclock in the morning on Tuesday, the most beautiful day of the year. Down below, a handful of rowers were gliding along the water as it glimmered in the sun. And on the Weeks Footbridge, a Harvard maintenance worker was busy scrubbing away a graffiti message someone had written there in black ink: **** Summers. </p>
<p>Sounds like something you'd say. Do you have an alibi for last week, Bulldog?</p>
<p>As sexist as Summers' statement may seem, it should not be immediately deemed nonsense. The physiology of the male brain differs from that of the female brain, as do hormone concentrations. It is quite possible that male brains tend to be especially adept in certain areas, while female brains tend to be especially adept in others. People are too eager to screem sexism to think about this.</p>
<p>Or it is possible that the methods of teaching currently used are more suited to the male brain than the female brain. This issue has already been raised in the teaching of law and math.</p>
<p>The "female brain" has been doing most of the teaching in elementary schools and high schools for the last 150 years. </p>
<p>Does that explain why girls invariably get better grades, even though the boys do relatively better in aptitude testing?</p>
<p>Although I don't recall the name of the study, I just thought I'd throw this into the mix. There have been numerous studies in social psychology that have analyzed elementary school teaching. After observing countless videotapes, psychologists found that when teaching math, female teachers focused more attention on the boys in the class. These teachers would call on boy more frequently, offer more encouragement, and sometimes provide them with more challenging supplementary work. During these same lessons, teachers would sometimes teach with their back to the girls in the class! When the teachers were interviewed later and shown the video tape, they were shocked - their emphasis on their male students was completely subconscious. After analyzing the responses given by the teachers concerning their views on education, psychologists concluded that perhaps the observed behavior resulted from cultural stereotypes about female inferiority in math. There are also studies that demonstrate that differences in performance can result from stereotype threat. If prompted first with the idea that "males traditionally do better on this test," before a math test, females exhibit a lower performance. However if told "males and females do equally well," females were shown to do just as well as their male counterparts.</p>
<p>Here's one of the first sites I could find about it on google
<a href="http://www.inform.umd.edu/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Essays/WomenAndMath.txt%5B/url%5D">http://www.inform.umd.edu/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Essays/WomenAndMath.txt</a></p>
<p>I believe the consensus is that girls invariably get better grades in elementary school - and even high school - because they are quieter, better behaved, and cause less trouble.</p>
<p>When aptitude is tested, however, the female advantage disappears.</p>
<p>I think that the degree of self-conidence, heavily influenced by cultural perceptions of gender specific ability and behavior, has a lot to do with the aforementioned difference. Since this is the Harvard forum, I thought I'd be interesting to cite a book about Harvard :). I was reading "The Truth About Harvard" the other day and the author wrote that:</p>
<p>"Part of the reason why female undergradutes are os on top of their work may be that, compared to men, women, on average, deem themselves less academically able to their peers. A 1996 study of the top 20 American universities revealed that one-third of men, but only one-sixth of women, consider themselves smarter than the majority of their classmates."</p>
<p>Those perceptions may be entirely accurate, if aptitude tests are any guide.</p>
<p>and if "aptitude tests" are any guide, then blacks and hispanics must be pretty dumb and asians must be the master race!</p>
<p>I guess here's the motivation - it appears Mr. Harper didn't think big mouth larry should get a raise!</p>
<p>the raise wasn't the only reason cited..</p>
<p>""I believe that Harvard's best interests require your resignation," Mr.<br>
Harper wrote in the letter to Dr. Summers, dated July 14. He noted in the<br>
letter that Dr. Summers had insulted people attending a Native American<br>
conference, alienated black professors and suggested that women might not<br>
have an "intrinsic" aptitude for science and engineering."</p>