Actually all he did was make a suggestion - his "best guess". And for that he's being lynched.

Crimethink, crimethink!

With thoughts like those, you'd think he was an eviiiil Repulican.

My daughter has enough problems in school without such insensitive dribble spouted by the Harvard president. She can run rings around any boy in her class when it comes to analytical thinking.

You'd think that in this day and age that people would be more intelligent than to say something that stupid. I'm sure he'll be attacked by an angry mob of women with PHD's :)

What is wrong with this world?
Why is somebody who is better in languages something less then somebody who is better in math?
And I have to admit I wish we would embrace more differences between men and women, because I believe it makes us all better.
As the French say: Vive la difference!
(I probably spelled it wrong.)

I recently read a book called _Astro Turf_ by M.G. Lord. It's partly a history of the Jet Propulsion Lab, partly a memoir of her relationship with her father, and part an exploration of gender roles in engineering. And she talks a lot about expectations for women and why women tend not to become engineers. It's a good read.

One of the things he said was there were greater variances in men then woman. This means that while woman and men (in the field of math and science) average out about the same the extreme ends of the scale tend to be more male. This is not saying men are smarter then woman any more then it is saying men are dumber then woman. You will find due to the greater variance more men who just don't get it and are at the bottom of the scale then woman.

A trivial example. 6 people, 3 men and 3 woman take a test to mesure there Math and Science ability on a scale of 1 to 10. The woman score 5, 6, and 7 respectively for an avg score of 6. The men score 3, 6 and 9 (had to get 6 and 9 together as almost a sex joke) for an avg score of 6. On the average the sexes are the same. One of the men was the "smartest" and one of the men was the "dumbest" due to the greater variance.

Also as a side note you have done an excellent job of mastering the writing your parents pushed you towards, your blog is always a pleasure to read.

It's been shown in studies that the thought processes of men and women are different. Neither is better than the other... they're just different. Perhaps this is the underlying foundation of his "guess."

Still and all, I think he's full of shit.

maybe he did not know what he was saying.

I find the fact that he did not lose his job over these statements repulsive. His comments are more violent than racism, more damaging than classism, and reach a level of educational irresponsibility not seen since the mid-19th century. His statement offends an entire gender and a blow to educational equality no matter how "accidental" or "unintended" his words may be.

The model I worked with over the weekend is pursuing her masters in mathematics at Columbia. Not yet 25 years old, she has already spent a year teaching in China, fluenty speaks and writes in five different languages, has published multiple research works, and memorizes entire books. Intellectually, the girl runs circles around a good 90% of the US population. Sure, she still wants to eventually have children and a family, but that by no means diminishes her intellectual strength nor her ability to contribute significantly to society through multiple means and methods.

She is so very much not alone. There are millions of young women with minds just as bright, just as creative and just as capable. IF they do not achieve the reason is NOT likely to be any shortcoming on their part but rather the persistent bias of people like Dr. Summers who carelessly create inadvertent but nonetheless real barriers by proposing that women are perhaps less suited for intellectual matters.

Our society has no place for such mindless and damaging public banter. Dr. Summers has demonstrated that surrounding oneself with intelligence does not make one wise. He would do well to resign post haste and, if not, Harvard's board should feel honor bound to remove him.

-G

There are inherent differences between men and women, since there is a biological meaning to female and male genders.
Males are the "experimental" gender, which tends to have more extremes. Females are the stable anchors of the population. So of we speak of smartness or IQ, statistically, males would have higher range than women. So you could say that men are simultaneously smarter and dumber than women.

Oops, Ed has already said essentialy the same thing. I just wanted to add that this greater variance between genders has its roots in biology and evolution of life on earth, and is typical for a large number of species.

it's good to know that Garrison Steelle is a strong supporter of intellectual inquiry and freedom of thought *cough*. apparently, you're only free to speak your mind if it fits into the orthodoxy of political correctness that Mr. Steelle is apparently a fan of. nowhere did Summers propose that "that women are perhaps less suited for intellectual matters."

As another blooger stated, "If it is the case that men are more predisposed to excel at math than women, this does not mean that all men are better at math that all women, that women cannot be successful mathematicians, that women should not pursue math-oriented careers, or that sexism and gender-bias are irrelevant. It would simply mean that statistical gender disparities in given fields are in part the result of genetic predispositions. Genetics provides but one possible explanation for the observed disparity in male and female participation and success in certain fields. But it may not be the whole story either. It is quite possible that certain genetic predispositions are magnified or reinforced by cultural stereotypes and bias. In the end, the reason why more men than women excel in math and science is an empirical question, and one worthy of careful examination. If genetic differences play a role -- and this is an "if" -- this is something worth knowing. The political and cultural sensitivity of the question should not place it off-limits to scientific examination."

Alexa dis a lovely job of selectively quoting Mr. Summers - he immediately follows the quote she gives with "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." In other words, he thinks it's due to intrinsic aptitude and the variability of attitude, but he'd love to be proven wrong.

Alexa said: "Larry's position is patently offensive because there is no way to prove or disprove his hypotheses."

That statement (no way to prove/disprove) is just wrong. You could in fact test this prospectively, but the PC establishment is afraid to do it because I suspect it will prove exactly what Larry said. Larry said, in a very elegant way, what anyone working in science/engineering sees with his/her own eyes very clearly. Some people confuse statements of fact/theory with policy recommendations, and they get all worked up and try to change the facts. Bush does this on the environment, the lefty PC establishment does it when it comes to race/gender differences. It's the same intellectually dishonest approach.

I'd like to point out that what President Summers said was that there are "issues of intrinsic aptitude". That this means he somehow believes women to be inferior is a leap of logic I'm still smarting over. As a grad of H'vad, I can say that there is a LOT of discussion one way or another about whether he was right or wrong. I'll stay away from that, as I will also stay away from whether he meant to say what he said, or it came out wrong, but I will say that if you look at his record at Harvard, he actually has done quite a bit to even the footing of academic women--which is still imbalanced currently.

I will definitely brand him as guilty of foolhardiness, but I do not believe based on only the snippets here (though I have read more elsewhere) that Summers is particularly guilty of sexism, classism, racism, or any other -ism save possibly malapropism.

As a woman studying science I find his comments amusing and outdated. I think that the ratio of men to women in maths and sciences are quickly approaching equality. In fact, I think that in many programs, including my own, there are actually more women in it than men.

I wonder if my participation in this discussion makes up for the fact that I came here to read porn.

according to Steve Biddulph in his book "Raising Boys", boys have a predisposition to do better in maths/science (not meaning they're any smarter/girls are dumber, just generally tend to do better) while girls have a predisposition to do better in english/languages (again, not meaning they're any smarter/boys are dumber) (an evolutionary effect from when men needed logic to hunt, and women networked within their domestic communities). he suggests this is simply due to the way their brains develop at an early age: hormones drive the boys' brain hemispheres to develop separately, then form connections later, whereas girls' brains develop holistically, forming connections from one side to the other very quickly. the result is that boys tend to excel in subjects like maths and science that use the left side of the brain more than the right (the 'logical' half), whereas girls tend to excel in subjects where extensive interaction is required between the left and right sides (the 'creative' and 'logic' interactions needed in, say, analysing a text).
i just thought this was interesting, because certainly in my school, there were more girls in the (advanced) english lit class, and more boys in the maths/science classes... however, i managed to get top of my english class (made up of half girls and half boys), whereas my friend kerry managed to graduate as top physics student!
so maybe by encouraging a healthy mix of boys and girls in both types of subjects, the genders can bypass their pre-dispositons, and nurture can overcome nature.
i hope i haven't bored anyone, but i find neuroscience/psychology really interesting.

sorry, i should've mentioned that kerry was a girl, and the majority of our physics class were boys.