Harvard women's group rips Summers

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/01/19/harvard_womens_group_rips_summers/

A suggestion by Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, that women may not have the same innate abilities in math and science as men has touched off an angry response from many Harvard professors, including members of a committee on women's issues who sent Summers a letter yesterday complaining that his remarks "impede our current efforts to recruit top women scholars."

-snip-

Summers has emphasized that when he spoke Friday at a conference in Cambridge he was presenting provocative hypotheses based on the research of others, rather than offering his personal views. But the Harvard professors who are upset say that the president of a world-famous university does not have the luxury of speaking as an independent researcher.

"It is obvious that the president of a university never speaks entirely as an individual, especially when that institution is Harvard and when the issue on the table is so highly charged," said the letter from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Standing Committee on Women.

The Harvard campus was buzzing with reaction to Summers' remarks yesterday, and even as about 50 professors added their name to the committee's letter, some said it didn't go far enough in expressing their anger and disappointment.

:thumbsdown:

If he is citing the research of "others" why not name names? Perhaps that research has been debunked?

Of course he just gave the seminar insight into why his leadership is lacking in the area as well:

Summers' talk, first reported in the Globe, hit a nerve on campus because there was already widespread concern over the hiring record of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the main body of the university. Each academic year since Summers became president in 2001, the percentage of women offered tenured jobs has declined. In the last academic year, only four of 32 such offers were extended to women.

Summers has said numerous times that he wants to improve that record.

president, also be so stupid?

they have a deep fear of women because they know we are more not less then they.

Nothing like a healthy dose of sexist generalization to start a good discussion.

topics of which he speaks are done by psychologists and psychometricians, and those in related fields.

If he doesn't want to trouble himself to read outside his field, and adjust his views to be consistent with the findings, then he is no better than an ignoramous in a bar somewhere, voicing the same "hypotheses."

It's interesting to note, that testosterone has been linked to increased ability in mathematics. This explains why most mathematicians peak in their 20s, and why most are men. Having said that, I think Mr. Summers's words were ill-advised. What could possibly be his point in saying something like that. I would expect more from the president of such a prestigious institution. To put it in perspective, UT-Austin is no Harvard, yet I know its pres would never say something like that. Just my $0.02

Arbitror78

:hi:

. . that there are numerous locations in the brain where various types of symbolic data get stored and processed - and these loci are not established at birth and therefore can end up being in different locations in adults.

For example, the best musicians often came from families where musical information was abundantly available for their brains to process in their early years - melody, rhythm, harmony, syncopation, etc. usually because parents were musicians. As the child developed, the presence of musical information and the opportunity to process it, guaranteed that the most efficient processing loci in that child's brain were adapted (programmed) for processing that type of information and remained (a disposition) throughout their lives - though they were not born with that predisposition.

The same child, brought up in a different household, might have developed brain connections where the most efficient processing centers went for fine body movement control as in sports or dance. Others, males or females, may have been exposed to abstract reasoning in games like chess at a young age and may have developed a disposition that appeared later as a gift for math or computer programming.

What seems to be a correlation between testosterone and math ability - could simply be a correlation between the games and activities that boys (who will have increased levels of testosterone) are exposed to and the games and activities that girls are exposed to - that set up their brains for greater efficiency at different tasks later in life.

It's long been observed that boys and girls seem to have different interests that dispose them for different life tracks and different abilities in life. This research offers a possible explanation other than the usual one where those differences are considered innate.

:kick:

The goddess of Truth.