<p>Yeah, you did. But aside from both having a reputation for prickly personality, what's your point?</p>
<p>James Traub piece in Slate that seems to cover all the bases. Maybe he should be the next Harvard pres?
[quote]
I, for one, will miss Summers, since university presidents who have something to say that is worth hearing are as rare as hen's teeth. And I worry that an emboldened faculty will push the Harvard Corporation to choose as his successor the reincarnation of Neil Rudenstine. Summers had a worthy cause; I hope he hasn't wound up discrediting it.
[/quote]
</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2136778/?nav=ais%5B/url%5D">http://www.slate.com/id/2136778/?nav=ais</a></p>
<p>My point is that when you lead a large, world-famous organization with a deeply-rooted culture, if you can't muster your troops you fail. If after several years your troops are openly rebelling and your critical numbers are not where they need to be, you will be "asked to resign".</p>
<p>Personality is a trivial word to describe character.</p>
<p>which is itself often a verdict on sexy. Discuss,..</p>
<p>The Fiorina reference was yours. Fiorina and Summers are both famous for having prickly personalities. I asked what your larger point was with regard to your repeated Fiorina reference. For example, what other similarities do you see? Make the character case, if applicable, or whatever other point it was that you were trying to make.</p>
<p>Sometimes deeply-rooted cultures need to be changed. I won't dispute that Summers failed to change Harvard's.</p>
<p>But this just reinforces the problems inherent to the reaction: Summers didn't say that this was his view; nor did he say that empirical evidence supported the view.</p>
<p>From Summers:</p>
<p>So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.</p>
<p>Now here is a section of the question/answer session following the speech:</p>
<p>"Q: You know, in the spirit of speaking truth to power, I'm not an expert in this area but a lot of people in the room are, and they've written a lot of papers in here that address .... </p>
<p>Larry Summers (LHS): I've read a lot of them. </p>
<p>Q: And, you know, a lot of us would disagree with your hypotheses and your premises... </p>
<p>LHS: Fair enough.</p>
<p>Q: So it's not so clear. </p>
<p>LHS: It's not clear at all. I think I said it wasn't clear. I was giving you my best guess but I hope we could argue on the basis of as much evidence as we can marshal."
<a href="http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html</a></p>
<p>So while Summers seems not exactly stubborn in his view of the innate and relative lack of ability of women in the sciences, he was very clear that this was his view, and it seems the reason he is not stubborn on the matter is because it is not at all clear.</p>
<p>Again, the problem here is that you had a Harvard president holding these views even when the issue is not at all clear, giving them profound credibility in his speech and doing it casually.</p>
<p>It is an awful thing to do, and people do it all the time. There was a time when people roundly thought Jews had a natural ability to play basketball, since they once dominated the game <a href="http://courses.umass.edu/anth106/midterm.html%5B/url%5D">http://courses.umass.edu/anth106/midterm.html</a>. There was also a time when science, real hard science, claimed Jews were inferior in IQ and feeble-minded. The creator of the SAT actually came out and said that his test proved the genetic inferiority of the Jews. Of all the groups given IQ tests in the early 19th century, Poles scored the lowest. And it is for this reason that this wonderful group of people got falsely branded as being stupid. Polish jokes persist even to this day because of science. <a href="http://www.rso.cornell.edu/scitech/archive/95sum/bell.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.rso.cornell.edu/scitech/archive/95sum/bell.html</a></p>
<p>It is just not the kind of thing we ought to throw around because so many people are wrongly destroyed by it. I myself paid a heavy price because of this very issue, only finding out, much too late, that science is not as trustworthy as it claims to be. So when I read of studies on how women are probably innately inferior to men in science, I scoff. Shoot, women didnt even generally have the right to vote until 1920. That is practically yesterday when we are talking cultural change. Imagine the pressures women endured in a society that claimed they were too unworthy to even vote. So in view of this pain, and much more like it, it is pretty ridiculous to casually talk about innate inabilities while leading one of the top universities in the world.</p>
<p>He mentioned that there was a study, undertaken by real scientists, of both sexes, that had some potentially important information, that real scientists might want to examine and refute.</p>
<p>Well, the problem with much of this hogwash is that it makes simple claims about terribly complex issues and these claims get debated and argued over because the matter is so amazingly large and ugly that nothing can be proven definitively. Meanwhile, little boys just like I once was are hearing how innately dumb and inferior we are when compared to our neighbors across town, and we arent supposed to be offended despite that we know otherwise. We are to just endure this and consider ourselves American like everyone else.</p>
<p>The fact is, even these scientific claims can have dramatic effects on IQ test performance. I experienced this myself, and yet not a single study has ever accounted for it. Based upon "science", I am almost retarded when I know perfectly well I am not. But, that is how it played out and now I have paid a heavy price for it.</p>
<p>Real scientists might have chosen to hit the USC study out of the park; instead, they chose hissy-fits. Which speaks poorly of Harvard, MIT, and all the other institutions wherein faculty members chose agit-prop over scholarship.</p>
<p>Perhaps. But I suspect these hissy-fits came about because the people having them are wounded by scientific claims they know are false and that they know ought not have been made so casually. It is like standing before a conference and claiming Jews likely caused their own problems with Hitler, that Hitler was well aware of how Jews ganged up against and murdered over 60 million Christians in Bolshevik Russia and he wanted to protect Germany from the same end, that I have read studies that make this point and that rather than others getting upset about it, they should just discuss it kindly, over a cup of tea.</p>
<p>Nonsense. Some things are too damaging to just casually throw around. Sure, we can and should discuss them. But we must, where these things are concerned, be sure to honor those most likely to be harmed by them. I dont think Summers did this and that this is why many people were angered by his speech.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier:</p>
<p>To augment your points, it is also important to put Summer's remarks in context. At the time he gave these remarks, there was already concern that, under his leadership at Harvard, the number of women being granted tenure had plummeted from previous levels.</p>
<p>It's also important to note the context of an institution that, until very recently in its history, had barred women completely and of an institution that is governed by a 7 member board consisting of six men and one woman.</p>
<p>The remarks about women in sciences were only a catalyst. As Interesteddad notes, they happened after the number of women granted tenure had declined and after an unsatisfactory meeting between senior women and Summers to discuss just that issue.<br>
But there were many other issues as well. One of the most recent and fiercest critics, I am told, is a former marine and a lifelong Republican not noted for championing hiring more women. A scientist, he became critical of Summers' favoritism toward certain departments and open contempt toward his own. Several people have cited Summers' lack of truthfulness ranging from his denial that he had ever contemplated moving the power to grant Ph.D.s away from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (a part of FAS) to his respone regarding the Shleifer affair that he did not know enough to comment on that case. Large numbers of profs had received a copy of an article authored by a Harvard alum that appeared in Institutional Investor and detailed the Shleifer affair involving insider trading, Caribbean accounts, etc.. that led to Harvard being fined $26M. For Summers, both as an individual (Shleifer is not only his colleague, but his former student and the two families spend vacations together, according to the article) and as president of Harvard, to claim lack of knowledge as a reason for abstaining from comments (it has never stopped him before) provoked incredulity even among his supporters (such as Robert Putnam, the well-respected political scientist whom I heard on WBUR yesterday). There were other problems and areas of concern as well. As for the Cornel West issue, I heard that many agreed with Summers. Criticism was largely confined to the Afro-Am department and (surprise!) to students. In other words, Summers did not just offend the "hard left," the PC faculty, the humanities profs. He also offended scientists, both male and female, and for reasons that went beyond his remarks on gender.</p>
<p>Summers has done many great things. His vision is actually widely shared among his supporters and his detractors alike. But he is impatient and many wanted to have more details worked out before signing off on some proposals. Harvard, of all places, moves slowly. It amuses me to see it described as a bastion of PC trendiness because its reputation in academia is just the opposite. Take Stephen Greenblatt. He was trendy 10-15 years ago, at Berkeley. But he has hugely modified his views on English literature and the New Historicism and has just been appointed editor to the Norton Anthology, shortly after joining the Harvard faculty.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So while Summers seems not exactly stubborn in his view of the innate and relative lack of ability of women in the sciences, he was very clear that this was his view
[/quote]
This is where I have a problem with those who criticize Summers in this regard. Nowhere--nowhere--does he even suggest that women have an "innate and relative lack of ability in the sciences." What he said is that the statistical anomolies....the off-the-wall geniuses who are likely to end up on the most prestigious faculties....are, according to some studies, disproportionately male. And that was only one small aspect of what he spoke about.</p>
<p>Personally, I did not find his remarks particularly objectionable. But, as I stated earlier, they came on the heels of a very unsatisfactory meeting with senior faculty women, scientists. Summers prolonged the controversy over his remarks by refusing to release their text until pushed and prodded. By then, tempers had been inflammed, and other issues that had been aired only in small groups until then came out into the open. Daniel Fisher, an applied physicist, has been one of the most vocal critics of Summers--his motion is still on the agenda, according to today's Crimson; I don't believe his criticisms have to do with women in the sciences.</p>
<p>Yawn.......</p>
<p>I have seen no evidence whatsoever that Summers would-be firing had anything to do with the "women's affair" or the Cornel West affair (other than that we know he was seen as abrasive.) What we do know is that he was working hard to increase the number of low-income students (which means fewer high-income and legacy ones), to reform the undergraduate curriculum (which would make it more difficult for the "gentlemen-scholars" to skate by), and to require more in the way of mentoring/professorial contact for undergraduates. It is just as likely the Corporation was unhappy with his liberal stances that threatened the Harvard status quo as they were with his more 'conservative' ones.</p>
<p>driver:</p>
<p>"This is where I have a problem with those who criticize Summers in this regard. Nowhere--nowhere--does he even suggest that women have an 'innate and relative lack of ability in the sciences.'"</p>
<p>It does seem to me he did express a view of general and innate intellectual weakness, relative to men, of women in math and science. But, you know, I think it is only fair that I admit two things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I really don't understand half of what Summers was saying in his speech. So I am really not a good judge of this stuff. It could be that the guy really isn't being as awful as many folks are saying and that he is being unfairly attacked. So, I will just back off and accept that and try to really see stuff from your point of view.</p></li>
<li><p>I'm a black guy who has been really hurt inwardly by this kind of stuff. So I admit that I am probably WAAAAAAYYYY too sensitive to any discussion on intelligence and genetics. I have read some blacks like Thomas Sowell (who I really REALLY respect and admire) talk about this stuff as if they are talking about the weather. But I must say, often when I am reading people like Sowell, I think "Yeah. Its easy for you to be so analytical and emotionally detached from the issue because you know you are smart and everyone else knows it too." But anyway, your post and my daughter's insistence that I am wrong, has caused me to try again to reread and really understand Summers. And to be as honest as I can, I think the guy was trying to be a help.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don't know about all the other stuff that people are angry about, but I am concluding that Summers was not being malicious in the least. I think he was being too "scientific" and not taking into account that a lot of people are sufferring and that these people need to know that no one is gonna shut them out of opportunities just because some stupid study says women are dumber than men.</p>
<p>The short of this story is that, for a variety of reasons, some fair, probably a lot of them unfair, Summers lost the support of a very powerful and vocal part of his staff. So what could he have done to avoid his resignation? Whatever the answer to this question, he obviously failed to do it. It is unfortunate, but as we all know, life can often be just full of garbage. I really wish this could have worked out amicably.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I really don't understand half of what Summers was saying in his speech.
[/quote]
I agree that his gobbledy-gook speaking style was a big part of the problem. Someone needed to edit that speech. I may attempt that, as an exercise....there was a lot of good content that was lost in "the maelstrom."</p>
<p>From The Economist:</p>
<p>"Political correctness depends on self-censorship, especially over group differences, and Mr Summers is constitutionally incapable of not examining people's premises."</p>
<p>No evidence that he didn't resign because he was perceived by the Corporation as too PC rather than not PC enough. The thing involving the speech on women meant no institutional changes for Harvard. Those involving admissions, curriculum reform, and mentoring undergrads meant very big institutional changes.</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>Summers had the support of the 7 member Corporate Board. They gave him a raise in his salary last summer, prompting the resignation of the Corporation's only African American member, Conrad Harper:</p>
<p>He had their support LAST year. The resignation of Harper, coupled with continued support from the Corporation (and his raise, pitiful as it was) indicates they were NOT particularly upset by the Cornel West, Native American, or Women in Science dust-up. So I think you can cross those off the list as direct or at least primary reasons for their potential unhappiness. Which is why I think my list is more reasonable.</p>
<p>Comments from JBHE:</p>
<p>"The presidency of Lawrence Summers at Harvard University never presented a favorable environment for black educational opportunities."</p>
<p>"After Summers famous remarks on the possible inferior capabilities of women in science, many black academics concluded that he probably held the same views about the inherent capabilities of African Americans."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index.html</a></p>
<p>This JBHE sounds like another moronic and racist organization. Any one who doesn't support AA is apparently racist and unfavorable to blacks and other minorites. Whats the world coming to?</p>