Harvard Prez has foot in mouth disease

<p>YES YES YES, hsm, that was like me! When I was young, that's what I did with my dolls: I set them up and taught them math! And then I also had a detailed ledger in which I kept statistical records of their grades and calculated curves for the tests. (sigh... I would have given some body part or other to have had access to math enrichment programs when I was young.)</p>

<p>The New York Times now has a story on it:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/national/18harvard.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=ae01f767e933e68a&hp&ex=1106024400&partner=homepage%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/national/18harvard.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=ae01f767e933e68a&hp&ex=1106024400&partner=homepage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The NYT says: "Dr. Summers arrived after a morning session and addressed a working lunch, speaking without notes. No transcript was made because the conference was designed to be off-the-record so that participants could speak candidly without fear of public misunderstanding or disclosure later."</p>

<p>In retrospect, it was naive to think that such deliberately provocative remarks made by a controversial and colorful college president would stay off-the-record.</p>

<p>And here's the story from the Crimson (Harvard student newspaper):
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article505349.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article505349.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.singlesexschools.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.singlesexschools.org/&lt;/a> There in an organisation for single sex education. They point out the differences between the sexes. Their read on the subject is not that the genders are hardwired for certain tasks but they they do them differently. In single gender schools there is less rather then more stereotyping. More boys do music and art. More girls do math and science. This can be accomplished in coed schools by having single gender classes. Some interesting differences: men locate destinations by the cardinal directions, women by landmarks; the female eye sees color and texture better, the male eye sees motion better; the list goes on.</p>

<p>History is full of women scientists, mathematicians & inventors. The problem with the premise is that it is simply ignorant.</p>

<p>It would not be possible to participate in this internet forum without the contributions of these two women, who invented computer programming:</p>

<p>"Ada Lovelace Byron, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, wrote in 1843 what today we'd call programs for Charles Babbage’s "Analytical Engine." She was a pioneer and is considered to be the very first programmer in history. That's why 130 years later, the U.S. Department of Defence gave her forename – Ada – A-D-A – to one of the most important computer programs in the world. It is used not only by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force but also by big industry, universities, and other centers of research."</p>

<p>"Grace Hopper, an American woman, invented in 1952 the very first compiler of all times, a program which translates a programming language so that it can be understood by computers. It was a sensational breakthrough which opened doors to automatic programming and thus directly to contemporary personal computers (PCs)."</p>

<p>Quoted text from:
<a href="http://www.invention-ifia.ch/computer_age_and_the_inventor.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.invention-ifia.ch/computer_age_and_the_inventor.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>(Interesting that Ada Byron was writing the world's first computer program while her father was writing poetry.....)</p>

<p>The issue is social: historically, women rarely have received credit or acknowledgement for their work. Example: Rosalind Franklin and the discovery of DNA.</p>

<p>the fact that there are individual women with extraordinary accomplishments in traditionally male fields, or males with extraordinary accomplishments in traditionally female fields does not negate the relavant question here, which is - Why are some professions or fields of study traditionally dominated by one gender or the other? It seems unlikely that a single factor can be the answer to such a complex question. What are <em>all</em> the possible factors? </p>

<p>If it is unacceptable to ask questions like these, how can we ever hope to improve opportunities for all of our children, males and females?</p>

<p>I have to say that I agree with Texas. I find this thread a rather uncomfortable read after the threads by concerned parents about their boys' shortcomings. Noone, to my reckoning, thought that their observations were sexist.
I have not read what Summers allegedly said. In this instance, Summers may have put his foot in his mouth (not the first time!) but I feel that here, at least, he is genuinely interested in improving opportunities for women in the sciences.</p>

<p>I am 50 years old. When I was a child, if I said I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, I was told, "girls can't be doctors! you mean you want to be a nurse." When I was 8 I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian, and when I was about 15 I went to visit the veterinary school at UC Davis and talked to a department head there. I asked about requirements for a pre-vet major; I was told that I should consider something else, that women were hardly ever accepted to spots in the veterinary school, because the resources of the university could not be wasted on people who would abandon their careers in order to marry and have children. This was in 1969.</p>

<p>When I started thinking about college for myself, I never considered applying to or attending Harvard or other Ivies. I couldn't. They didn't admit women. </p>

<p>When I started college my roommate was working her way through school, because her parents wouldn't pay for her to go to college -- even though they were paying for the college educations of her two brothers. The parents didn't see the point of paying for a girl to go to college - so she had been working all through high school just to save the money to go to college. This was in 1970. She was a biology major. </p>

<p>I ended up becoming a lawyer. When I graduated from law school and began practicing law, it was rare for me to see other women in the courtroom. There were judges who were openly hostile to women lawyers, making overtly sexist comments and telling sexist jokes. </p>

<p>I assume my experience is pretty common for my generation -- we did in fact become doctors and lawyers, but we encountered and broke down barriers every step of the way. </p>

<p>It takes time to rise to the top of one's field, so it wasn't until I was out of school for about 20 years, in my mid-forties, that I began to notice that a lot of my law school classmates now had become judges or senior partner at their firms. This was in the 1990's. </p>

<p>So it's pretty obvious to me why there are not more women at the top of fields once dominated by men. It's simple: throughout history, up until 30 years ago we suffered overt discrimination every step of the way - and in the past 3 decades, we have had to maneuver our way past all sorts of covert barriers - rules & practices designed with men in mind, like deals being made at private clubs that only men could join. We still encounter discriminatory wages -- often finding that less qualified men are being paid more than we are -- and the "glass ceiling" is still very real. </p>

<p>So the bottom line answer to the question of why there are not more women at the top of their professions in various fields is that ours is the first generation that was even given the chance. In one generation we have made remarkable progress -- but it hasn't been enough time to eradicate all the barriers.</p>

<p>Calmom: I disagreed with you that history is full of women mathematicians and scientists. A few swallows do not spring make. But I agree with you about the reasons for the lack of women at the top of certain professions. It takes time for a new generation to emerge and rise to the top, and many of the top professors were only students when some of the barriers to higher education for women began to fall.
But what about the fact that in math programs such as my S has attended the ratio of boys to girls is 3:1? That many colleges still feel the need to give priority to women in sciences despite the fact that more women apply to colleges than men? That in fields such as computer science which emerged recently men still outnumber women? Is it due to family pressures and preconceived ideas? Is it due to subtle discrimination in schools (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of teachers are female?) This is where I agree with Texas: We need to investigate why there are still so few women in math and sciences.</p>

<p>Should I state the obvious? 43% of MIT undergrads are female. So are there really fewer women in math, science, and engineering? Or does Harvard have a problem that MIT doesn't?</p>

<p>In 1971 I interviewed at Harvard. My father went there (for a graduate program), my two older sisters went there. About halfway through, the interviewer said "If you're that interested in chemistry, you'd probably be happier at MIT." Since my older sisters had said the same thing, I asked to borrow the interviewer's phone, called MIT, made an appointment there and left. MIT did in fact want me.</p>

<p>Edit: oh, and I forgot to mention: Larry Summers was in my graduating class at MIT. The one with fewer than 5% women. Maybe he'd prefer a single-sex environment again. Unlike the rest of us.</p>

<p>Bravo, Calmom, and thanks for sharing your success story. A lot of us have gone through a lot to fight sex discrimination in the past 30 years. This is exactly why Summers' comments are so distressing. There is no way to separate the "official" Summers who is the president of Harvard and an "unofficial" off the record observer of gender phenomena. When the President of Harvard speaks the world listens. When he says (or even implies) that women might not have what it takes genetically to be successful in the sciences others will use this statement for their own ends. I don't buy into the "deliberately provocative" or "I'm only repeating someone else's theory" excuse: Provocative and right is fine for a person in a public role. Provocative and unsubstantiated is hurtful. It is ironic that he discounted "social issues" as a reason for women's lower performance, then went on to create a negative social environment by making this public statement in a forum that was meant to explore gender issues. </p>

<p>Talking about genetic differences is frustratingly counterproductive. Yes, women are shorter than men. Yes, girls tend to play with dolls. Yes, high school accelerated math programs are dominated by boys. All of these statements are true; however, the risk of promoting the genetically indisposed argument is that it can be perverted into a reason for not promoting women in math/sciences. If the President of Harvard says that women can't hack it genetically in the sciences, then it will be all too easy for other colleges, research labs, corporations to feel complaisant with their own unequal male/female ratios. (Talk about "passive discrimination!") For Harvard to have offered women only 4 out of 32 tenured position is worrisome. In truth I don't know how this compares to other colleges. It may be the same or better than some. But the point is that it's Harvard, it's Larry Summers, it's the benchmark. They're supposed to set the standard.</p>

<p>The part that irked me the most was his reasoning that women were reluctant or unable to work 80 hour weeks. This absolutely upside down reasoning. Many of the professional women I know are not HAVING children BECAUSE they are working 80 hour weeks. They don't have a wife at home to take care of the kids! On the other hand many of us have managed to have families AND demanding jobs. We've made our personal sacrifices and don't appreciate the assumption that positions that require extreme commitment are off bounds for women!</p>

<p>I'm not a particularly PC person and although I'm a feminist and a senior manager in a male dominated industry, I have very little patience with women (or anyone) who expect a job or any position to be handed to them just because they have suffered discrimination. I feel, however, that even after 30 years, all of our progress is yet fragile and can be so easily eroded by these kinds of casual but influential comments.</p>

<p>Dmd77: MIT has a policy of giving a tip to female applicants--as has Brown. This is why it has 43% female students. I do not dispute the policy; in fact, I applaud it. But if it were not for it, the proportion of female students would be much lower.
Summers is the father of two daughters, and by all accounts, quite devoted to them. He is also considered to have a tin ear as far as the humanities are concerned, so I feel sure that he would rather they go into the hard sciences.</p>

<p>Momrath: You may not have read the Sunday NYT magazine a few months back about women (mostly very successful lawyers, if I recall correctly) who dropped out and decided to stay home to raise their kids. Maybe Summers was recalling that article as well. </p>

<p>"But the point is that it's Harvard, it's Larry Summers, it's the benchmark. They're supposed to set the standard."</p>

<p>One of the biggest problem, which Harvard shares with Yale, is tenure at the full professor level rather than at the associate professor level. The level of achievement required for full professor is higher than for associate professor; the applicant is compared with the rest of the field rather than being assumed a priori to merit promotion to tenure as long as s/he has been productive, yet the time frame for evaluation is either the same or only slightly longer than for associate professor. This is a pretty formidable hurdle. Another obstacle is family. By the time men and women are at a certain stage in their career, they have a spouse with a career of his or her own and children whom they are unwilling to uproot from their school. These are considerations that affect both men and women, but since there are fewer women at that level to begin with, their effect is magnified. When I was a graduate student, if Harvard whistled, people came, bringing their faculty wives along. If the wife was working Harvard would try to get her a position in a nearby university, usually successfully. No more. Local universities no longer want to play ball, the wives have careers of their own and do not wish to give them up. There are plenty of commuting profs, some with young children; universities are in dread that they will lose their colleague when s/he gets fed up with the commute, especially when children are involved.</p>

<p>I think that a lot of the media reports have been pulling his comments out of context.</p>

<p>He was discussing current research and theories, and offering a possible explanation for career differences. Perhaps he didn't word things as carefully as he should have (he apparently offended some people, although the Chronicle of HE found an equal number of people who had no problems with the comments). I am not sure he deserves the excoriation he's been getting. He seems to have a history of rubbing people the wrong way, doesn't he?</p>

<p>A little note about anecdotes... examples of gifted women in the math and sciences really don't challenge scientific findings that there may gender differences in aptitudes for science. Let's turn this around and choose a different example. If scholars find that, say, toddler girls are more expressive in their language, that doesn't mean that all toddler boys are grunters and pointers. And having a verbally brilliant toddler boy doesn't mean the research is bunk, either. Research is usually reporting in generalities (in fact, you've got to have a pretty big trend before the findings are meaningful significant). Humans fall along a spectrum and you'll find exceptions galore. People forget this so often, I fear we've got a scientific literacy problem in this country, with too many people not understanding how to interpret research findings. The media doesn't help much, does it?</p>

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<p>I would hope that men would be reluctant to work 80 hour work weeks, too! It affects their health, their relationships with wife and their children. Is being a CEO of a big company (or Harvard professor or law partner at a big law firm) worth having no personal life and losing your family ? Many women (and some men) have come to the conclusion--NO.</p>

<p>I think accommodating women in different fields can make for a better work environment for both men and women. Take the story of bringing women into the field of fighter jet maintenance. Women can't do this job, the men said. They can't heft the 100 pound toolbox needed out to the airplane. Well, women mechanics were put on the flight line and the men were right--they couldn't heft those heavy toolboxes. They put the toolbox on a little wagon and rolled it out to the planes. <strong>Light bulb goes off</strong> Now the men roll their tools out to the plane on a wagon.</p>

<p>Too long have men been chewed up and spit out by corporate America. Men of the world, unite!</p>

<p>"Momrath: You may not have read the Sunday NYT magazine a few months back about women (mostly very successful lawyers, if I recall correctly) who dropped out and decided to stay home to raise their kids. Maybe Summers was recalling that article as well. "</p>

<p>Marite, this speaks about socialization, not nature. Let's face it, their husbands don't nearly as often drop out to raise the kids because it's still expected that their wives will, or at the very least compromise their careers to do so. A great model would be two half-time careers, and two involved parents, but the reality does not lend itself to making it possible (for one thing, neither then is likely to get benefits.)</p>

<p>Marite wrote: * MIT has a policy of giving a tip to female applicants--as has Brown. This is why it has 43% female students. I do not dispute the policy; in fact, I applaud it. But if it were not for it, the proportion of female students would be much lower.*</p>

<p>MIT claims that they do NOT give admissions preference to women. </p>

<p>Their figures show that women are admitted at a much higher rate than men, but they make an interesting argument that numbers do not tell the whole story. They assert that the women who do apply are a much more highly self-selected (and therefore qualified) group than the men who apply. It seems at least theoretically plausible to me that those women who do have the confidence to apply to MIT might be disproportionately stronger than the pool of men who have the confidence to apply to MIT. (There are a number of studies that show systematic differences in confidence between men and women in general.)</p>

<p>MIT admissions officer Matt McGann wrote in his blog:</p>

<p>* Let me briefly address the topic of the qualifications of women at MIT. Women at MIT have a higher graduation rate than men at MIT. Women at MIT graduate with higher GPAs. Women at MIT run a majority of the student activities. We have no affirmative action in admissions of women at MIT -- the women we admit to MIT stand out on their own. *</p>

<p>Source: <a href="http://blogs.mit.edu/madmatt/posts/3423.aspx#FeedBack%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://blogs.mit.edu/madmatt/posts/3423.aspx#FeedBack&lt;/a> (You need to scroll down the page quite a bit to see this.)</p>

<p>Whether or not MIT in fact gives a "tip" to its women applicants, it does seem to be doing something "right" with them once they get there! It is not a case of MIT admitting less qualified women who can't do the work once they get there.</p>

<p>Garland:</p>

<p>You are right, of course, that this speaks of socialization. I was responding specifically to Momrath's comments about the 80-hour week. The article actually, did not refer to pressure by the men that the wives stay at home. It seemed to be the women's decision alone. It also seemed that they were affluent enough to be able to afford it. I personally could not!
As for two half-time careers, I suspect that more and more couples may be pushed by their companies into such a pattern so that the companies can avoid paying benefits. Except, as we know, there ain't such a thing as half-time work, more 2/3 or full time work for half-time pay. </p>

<p>I still have only read indirect quotations from Summers; they seem to be a mixture of musings about the importance of nature (the daddy and baby trucks) and socialization (the 80 hours week).</p>

<p>homeschoolmom:</p>

<p>I am not a proponent of going by stats alone as a predictor of college success. I have long believed that applicants with slightly lower stats are as capable as students with higher stats of excelling in college. I am not in the least surprised that female students excel once admitted at MIT. I have also learned to discount what admission officers say about their school's policy. As Dmd noted, when she graduated from MIT in 1971, only 5% of students were women. I suspect that the increase to the present 43% is not due solely to the greater availability of qualified female applicants. It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation with the suit MIT female faculty brought a few years ago. Students who graduated as recently as 10 years ago have commented (favorably) on the different atmosphere at MIT as a result of the greater number of women. Previous posters have commented on MIT's attempt to appear warm and fuzzy at information meetings, which may be part of an effort to attract more women applicants.</p>

<p>MIT's emphasis on biotechnology (as opposed to engineering and comp sci) might be a contributing factor to the increase in women's enrolment. But then, it would raise the issue: why are so few women attracted to engineering or comp sci?</p>

<p>Marite, didn't mean to imply that men are pushing their wives to stay home (some do, of course.) But since most women are brought up to feel more responsible for the kids, they are more likely to perceive there's a poblem and be the ones to leave work to compensate. A guy that works 80/hrs a week isn't likely to be perceived as neglecting his kids, while a woman is. And (flamebait here, folks), I do believe that two 80/hr a week careers are often tough on the kids.</p>

<p>(My H and I were just talking this morning about how we'd both love to move to half-time jobs after S is out of school, but the insurance benefits would cost a fortune, since most p/t jobs don't include them.)</p>

<p>Marite: * I have also learned to discount what admission officers say about their school's policy. *</p>

<p>Universities are supposed to be institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth.</p>

<p>It is indeed ironic and sad that admissions officers (who are the "public face" of their institution to large numbers of the public) do not always feel they can be honest and straightforward in describing their institution's policies. (I recall sitting in a Princeton information session last year where the adcom insisted that there was absolutely NO admissions preference given to early decision applicants. I was sitting with my daughter and a friend who was a senior in high school. The friend's eyes grew wide and she leaned over to me and whispered, shocked, "He's lying, right?" I was saddened to see that she was justifiably losing trust in an institution that had been among her top choices.)</p>

<p>In the case of affirmative action, honesty and straightforwardness in describing the institution's policies may undermine the very goals that affirmative action is trying to achieve. Self-confidence is an important component of academic achievement and a student who starts out with the knowledge she was given an admissions "tip" to get into a notoriously challenging institution will have yet another obstacle to overcome.</p>

<p>There is a very problematic issue (somewhat akin to the Heisenberg principle in physics) in studying innate differences in human abilities. The very process of trying to observe those innate differences changes the environment in which the human subjects under study are working in a way that may influence other variables.</p>

<p>Garland,</p>

<p>I agree. Especially if the children to not need the continuous and loving attention of their parents and prefer their ever changing daycare workers/nannies to their parents form of attention. That is, to be socialized and cared for, or loved and cared for.
I supose a hypothesis such as this is worth debating.</p>