<p>"Lord save us from our friends", eh?</p>
<p>A major fault of some H boosters is that they can find no wrong with their beloved University. It is a fine university, but when someone speaks of a flaw, they are quick to attack the messenger. They give little thought to the content of the claim always hoping to obscure. Hopefully, they will come to the realization that finding, discussing and correcting flaws leads to improvement, which ultimately makes the task of defending their beloved more easy.</p>
<p>Alphacdcd, I am not a Harvard booster and I don't see this as a flaw. The only flaw I see is in the people attacking Summers.</p>
<p>Summers has plenty of internal enemies. Generally they are profs whose sweet little world he threatens to change: making teachers teach, looking long and hard at the tenure rules, shaking up the local academic baronies, etc. There are a lot of hidden agendas - and some not so hidden.</p>
<p>I say Summers is a breath of fresh air - shaking up a faculty that had grown accustomed to rolling over his spineless, bovine predecessor.</p>
<p>Summers has been accused of racism, sexism and discrimination and has hardly been exonerated on any count. A breath of fresh air? Hmmm. Seems more like a stale, poisonous holdover from the "good old boy" days of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.</p>
<p>lol racism....</p>
<p>itsallgood, i would suggest you look to the fact that under Summers' leadership, the percentage of matriculating black and hispanic students has reached an all-time record at Harvard.</p>
<p>Byerly is correct when he states that not everything is as it seems. The amount of hostility heaped upon him for a comment that one feminist MIT professor took out of context and made a huge deal of makes me suspicious.</p>
<p>Wasnt it Einstein who said that "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."?</p>
<p>I will agree that the '60's were "poisonous" ... and likewise the 70's. </p>
<p>Its now time to clear that "poison" out of the system, and Larry Summers has the intestinal fortitude to get the job done.</p>
<p>When he retires - many years hence - I firmly believe that he will go down as one of the great educational reformers in American history.</p>
<p>now, now, byerly, the 60s brought us many great things, including my right to eat in a restauarant without having ketchup dumped on my head.</p>
<p>and how could you not like promiscuity and the relentless pursuit of drug-induced pleasure? hahaha</p>
<p>I wish Larry well too, but if he lasts another year it will be a miracle.</p>
<p>agreed, mensa, agreed</p>
<p>well, now summers is changing his public image, or at least trying to, by compensating for his comments last month.</p>
<p>"Moving to counter widespread criticism of his comments last month on women's science capabilities, the president of Harvard University announced initiatives yesterday to improve the status of women on the faculty, including a commitment to create a senior administrative position to strengthen recruiting."</p>
<p>Attention female scientists. Your chances at Harvard have just doubled. Help save Larry's job, Apply to Harvard.</p>
<p>Boston Globe Editorial
By: JOHN HENNESSEY, SUSAN HOCKFIELD AND SHIRLEY TILGHMAN
Women and science: the real issue
By John Hennessey, Susan Hockfield and Shirley Tilghman | February 12, 2005</p>
<p>HARVARD PRESIDENT Lawrence Summers's recent comments about possible causes of the under-representation of women in science and engineering have generated extensive debate and discussion -- much of which has had the untoward effect of shifting the focus of the debate to history rather than to the futur</p>
<p>The question we must ask as a society is not "can women excel in math, science, and engineering?" -- Marie Curie exploded that myth a century ago -- but "how can we encourage more women with exceptional abilities to pursue careers in these fields?" Extensive research on the abilities and representation of males and females in science and mathematics has identified the need to address important cultural and societal factors. Speculation that "innate differences" may be a significant cause for the under-representation of women in science and engineering may rejuvenate old myths and reinforce negative stereotypes and biases.</p>
<p>Why is this so important? Our nation faces increasing competition from abroad in technological innovation, the most powerful driver of our economy, while the academic performance of our school-age students in math and science lags behind many countries. Against this backdrop, it is imperative that we tap the talent and perspectives of both males and females. Until women can feel as much at home in math, science, and engineering as men, our nation will be considerably less than the sum of its parts. If we do not draw on the entire talent pool that is capable of making a contribution to science, the enterprise will inevitably be underperforming its potential.</p>
<p>As the representation of women increases in every other profession in this country, if their representation in science and engineering does not change, these fields will look increasingly anachronistic, less attractive, and will be less strong. The nation cannot afford to lose ground in these areas, which not only fuel the economy, but also play a key role in solving critical societal problems in human health and the environment.</p>
<p>Much has already been learned from research in the classroom and from recent experience on our campuses about how we can encourage top performance from our students. For example, recent research shows that different teaching methods can lead to comparable performance for males and females in high school mathematics. One of the most important and effective actions we can take is to ensure that women have teachers who believe in them and strong, positive mentors, male and female, at every stage of their educational journey -- both to affirm and to develop their talents. Low expectations of women can be as destructive as overt discrimination and may help to explain the disproportionate rate of attrition that occurs among females as they proceed through the academic pipeline.</p>
<p>Colleges and universities must develop a culture, as well as specific policies, that enables women with children to strike a sustainable balance between workplace and home. Of course, achieving such a balance is a challenge in many highly demanding careers. As a society we must develop methods for assessing present and future productivity that take into account the long-term potential of an individual and encourage greater harmony between the cycles of work and life -- so that both women and men may better excel in the careers of their choice.</p>
<p>Although we have a long way to travel in terms of recruiting, retaining, and promoting women faculty in scientific and engineering fields, we can also point to significant progress. According to the National Science Foundation, almost no doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to women in 1966 (0.3 percent), in contrast to 16.9 percent in 2001. And in the biological and agricultural sciences, the number of doctorates earned by women rose from 12 percent to 43.5 percent between 1966 and 2001.</p>
<p>Our three campuses, and many others, are home to growing numbers of women who have demonstrated not only extraordinary innate ability, but the kinds of creativity, determination, perceptiveness, and hard work that are prerequisites for success in science and engineering.</p>
<p>These figures demonstrate the expanding presence of women in disciplines that have not, historically, been friendly to them. It is a matter of vital concern that the future holds even greater opportunities.</p>
<p>John Hennessey is a computer scientist and president of Stanford University. Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shirley Tilghman is a molecular geneticist and president of Princeton University.</p>
<hr>
<p>So now what's next from that type of thinking: affirmative action for women in sciences? The next victim du jour?</p>
<p>Nip this in the bud....</p>
<p>Are men and women different?</p>
<p>Answers that I have seen:</p>
<p>1) Yes.
2) Yes, but when it comes to the mind every group is the same. We know there are physical differences between males and females, but the brain . . . it just couldn't be different. It just couldn't be. The fact that anyone would even try to look into it is nausiating.</p>
<p>(When I speak of groups of things being the same, I am talking about equal distributions in each aspect)</p>
<p>actually the things he said are well rooted in science (i'm just studying them in intro psych right now)</p>
<p>UExpress
THE EVIDENCE PILES UP: MEN AND WOMEN ARE INDEED DIFFERENT</p>
<p>Sun Feb 6, 8:05 PM ET</p>
<p>Add to My Yahoo! Op/Ed - John Leo</p>
<p>By John Leo</p>
<p>Could the recent flap over comments by Harvard President Lawrence Summers about women and science have ended differently? Oh, yes. Summers is bold enough to speak unfashionable truths now and then, but, alas, he is not inclined to stick to his guns very long. When the opposition howled, he buckled quickly and issued regrets and apologies. But suppose Summers had been the owner of a sturdier spine. He might have made a serious contribution. He could have said something like this:</p>
<p>Leo
John Leo</p>
<p>"Yesterday I spoke bluntly at a closed academic conference and offered some possible explanations of why women are less represented than men in the upper reaches of math and science. In addition to the cost of the time women spend in bearing and raising children, I said that innate sexual differences may be playing a role.</p>
<p>"This was a politically incorrect thing to say, but I believe it is true. An enormous literature on sexual differences has been piling up for 30 years or more. Everybody knows about this work, but it is one of the large elephants in the academic living room that nobody is supposed to notice. It is officially invisible. Careers can end if you see it.</p>
<p>"The literature points to one conclusion: The sexes are different. Males and females have different aptitudes, and they make choices based on those aptitudes. Males tend to outperform females on mathematical reasoning, mechanical comprehension and spatial ability, while females tend to outperform males in such areas as language use, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, verbal memory, spelling and mathematical calculations. On many verbal tasks, women as a group are decisively better than men and remain so all their lives.</p>
<p>"In addition, there is a persistent finding that men tend to prefer to work with 'things,' while women, more than men, prefer to work with people. This may sound like a stereotype to you. It is certainly true that when the doors to high-paying professions were closed to women, females gravitated, by necessity, to valuable but lower-paying 'people' fields like nursing and teaching. But now that the barriers are finally coming down, women are still opting in great numbers for 'people' fields. We have seen a great surge of women into law and medicine but far less female interest in engineering, math and the hard sciences.</p>
<p>"On the whole, women tend to avoid fields with a low social component -- mechanical engineering, particle physics and entomology, for example. Women tend to favor fields with a high social dimension -- anthropology, sociology, psychology (particularly developmental and child psychology but not physiological psychology). Even within scientific fields, women lean toward more 'social' areas such as medicine, nutritional science, environmental health, biology and bioengineering.</p>
<p>"In his book 'Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality,' Kingsley Browne says that one important reason why girls turn away from science is that they tend to find it 'boring,' not a 'fun puzzle to study,' or to conclude that 'science breaks down people's ideas of right and wrong.'</p>
<p>"Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski, well-known researchers at Vanderbilt University, have spent more than 20 years tracking a group of 5,000 males and females who had been identified as mathematically gifted when they were 12 to 14 years old. Eight percent of the males, but only 1 percent of the females, pursued doctorates in math, engineering or physical science. More females than males received degrees in the life sciences, health or medicine. The females did not veer away from the hard sciences out of lack of opportunity, doubts about competence or fear of failure. The 5,000 gifted children knew they were good, but the females had different values and many made different choices.</p>
<p>"What is the lesson here? That it may be a great mistake to insist on equal male-female representation in every area of academia. The social sciences are now heavily female. Law and medicine may well become predominantly female too, while the hard sciences stay mostly male. Is there anything wrong with that? Benbow and Lubinski say frankly that 'there may be a need to consider a degree of unequal representation' in certain fields. 'Unequal representation' is threatening only if we think that respect for the choices made by our young people is less important than worrying about a perfect gender balance.</p>
<p>"I suggest we open all the doors, forget about the numbers, and just let students choose their paths freely. I believe this today, and I will believe it a year from now, because I am sure it is the right conclusion. If you disagree, let's debate it. Or perhaps you might like to select a different university." .</p>
<hr>
<p>but seriously, is anyone going to deny that men and women are psychologically different?</p>