I may have been a bit too quick to rush to the defense of Larry Summers, as a number of ladies have pointed out that while he may have been correct, he also should have thought what the likely response would have been. Ruth Marcus, writing in the WaPo, makes many good points that are generally in agreement with what I said:
"I felt I was going to be sick," said MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who had led an investigation into hiring practices there. She walked out during Summers's remarks. "My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she said. "I was extremely upset." Was there a feminist around -- myself included -- who didn't wince at this bring-out-the-smelling-salts statement?
As might have been expected, some who weren't present took the reported remarks and inflated them, as if Summers had said biological differences were both irrefutably established and the sole cause of the shortfall. Summers has since issued three increasingly lengthy -- and increasingly groveling -- explanation-apologies.
Even a cursory look at the statistics suggests that something is amiss at the intersection of women, science and academia....
Biology may not be destiny, but as we Brio-buyers and truck-swaddlers have discovered, its effects also can't be discounted. Many of the same people denouncing Summers, I'd venture, believe fervently that homosexuality, for example, is a matter of biology rather than of choice or childhood experience. Many would demand that medical studies be structured to consider differences between men and women in metabolizing drugs, say, or responding to a particular disease. And many who find Summers's remarks offensive seem perfectly happy to trumpet the supposed attributes that women bring to the workplace -- that they are more intuitive, or more empathetic or some such. If that is so -- and I've always rather cringed at such assertions -- why is it impermissible to suggest that there might be some downside differences as well?
And the conclusion is one that says very much the same as I did
The Summers storm might have been easy to forecast. But it says less, in the end, about the Harvard president than it does about the unwillingness of the modern academy to tolerate the kind of freewheeling inquiry that academics and intellectuals above all ought to prize rather than revile.
In other words, there is a problem and we should not immediately discount a set of possible answers because they don't fit with what we want the answer to be. However Ann Althouse, while linking to that article and refering to the downside differences paragraph quoted above, makes some very cogent points about the greater problems:
"Impermissible" is an extreme word. The question should be: why is it worrisome? And then the answer is obvious: it's worrisome because there has been and continues to be so much deeply entrenched unfair discrimination against women that we are afraid that any negative quality that science might establish will be used to mean more than it should. Like Marcus, I cringe at the blather about female intuition and empathy and agree that those who talk about that seem to invite the observation that there is a downside. People talk about the positive in the hope of overcoming all the negative assumptions that underlie the unfair discrimination that really has taken place historically.
This is a point backed up by Sisu, who says it out right:
Like wolves, insecure mysogynists with no discernible aptitudes -- scientific or otherwise -- are always waiting just beyond the campfire to rush in when the flames ebb. SEE! they'll say. Women are cute but dumb and men are smart. The President of Harvard says so. They may be over-reacting -- or maybe not -- but our sympathies lie with the scientifically and mathematically accomplished women who are asked to listen to this drivel. The woman made me do it, Lord. From what we've read, it wasn't what Lawrence Summers said per se so much as his tone when he said it. We weren't there, but our antennae are bristling. It's universal for men to trash women in order to build themselves up. We're sure President Summers had no such thing in mind, but it's a touchy subject, how biological differences might produce statistical differences in intellectual abilities between the sexes.
Indeed it occurs to me that much of the genuine danger revolves precisely around this point. Although I do feel many reacted with unthinking anger that their cherished beliefs were challenged, others regret the speech because it is likely to provide evidence to continue unjust oppression of women. The danger is that as a result women who are at the top end of the Bell curve and wish to become professors will find themselves hitting a brick wall of prejudice that says that they don't really exist and can't be capable of achieving their goals. Proper understanding of statistics would reduce this likelihood but it seems that mathematics is one of those topics that people believe to be more and more optional (post below). Update:Good points as usual at Powerlineblog