A Harvard Professor's Take on the Summers Vote

[Guest MikeSC]

A sad day for Harvard

 

March 15th, 2005 (thanks CIP for having corrected my typo) will be mentioned as a sad day in the history of Harvard University. The main point of the FAS faculty meeting in the Loeb Drama Center was a largely symbolic no-confidence vote proposed by Mr. Latory, a voodoo expert and an apologist for the corrupt and brutal Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida. It passed by a healthy margin 218:185; eighteen professors abstained. The less radical but equally sick resolution composed by Mrs. Skočpol has passed by a huge margin, too (253:137).

 

Because I was afraid of this result, I voted for the motion to postpone the no-confidence vote indefinitely; unfortunately, this desperate attempt of Philip Kuhn (Asian Languages) to avoid a disaster did not pass. The previous blog article with 54+ links to texts supporting Lawrence Summers was here.

 

This slightly surprising result has occured despite a significant number of speakers with very powerful and very diverse arguments opposing the motions - speakers whose reasoning has topped the intellectual strength of the advocates of the resolutions roughly by an order of magnitude. It was not just Steve Pinker, our star psychologist who has unsuccessfully tried to explain everyone that the statistical distributions are derived via research and papers, not by votes, and the right-wingers Ruth Wisse and Stephen Thernstrom who offered their arguments. Some economists followed, although their speeches were not perfect from a formal viewpoint. As another speaker has pointed out, the historians will look at the FAS faculty today as an example of another era of McCarthyism where the enemy was not in the government: it was within which is much more worrisome.

 

Most of the faculty decided to support the misguided declarations based on a flawed reasoning; the intent to divide the faculty and suppress everyone who has a different opinion; a disrespect to the free inquiry and the academic search for the truth; a chaotic approach to the management; an ordinary human misunderstanding. I am sure that many of those who supported the motion will think that their dogmas have been declared universally true. But they have not. The truth (i.e. VERITAS from Harvard's logo) does not really care about the confused opinions of a few (namely two) hundreds of colleagues of ours, and I hope that the Harvard Corporation cares just an infinitesimal bit more.

 

The only thing that this vote has proved to me is that the politically correct people won't hesitate to use any tools to achieve their goals, and the only way how they stop before doing something really nasty is that someone else will stop them. It won't happen automatically.

 

As another speaker has pointed out, this symbolic vote was not really about Lawrence Summers who is an extremely bright and kind of successful guy anyway - and who will not get lost: it was about the professors of FAS themselves and they have failed miserably. No doubt, most of the votes supporting the shameful declarations came from humanities and social sciences - especially the people who think that they can determine the scientific truth by a vote (and a couple of politically powerful friends). Those who believe that the objective truth (and objective science) cannot exist and all opinions reflect the political power - and the people who are living their lives trying to prove this point.

 

Once the media informed about the sad news, Harvard immediately lost some donations, for example from this guy. No doubt, thousands of others will follow. Others have said, for example,

 

    * Summers told the truth when he knew damn good and well at Harvard only the current pravda is permitted to be spoken. Fortunately, those of us in the real world know what Harvard is all about and can judge this ridiculous action accordingly. (Jeff Naylor)

    * What kind of a man supports the presidency of Babangida but not that of Summers? [Mr. Matory.] Not anyone that I’d want educating my children. (Richard Bennett)

 

James Brown and independently The Big Trunk compared the faculty meeting to the trial with Socrates. James Joyner also appreciates Summers, and is sad that Skočpol, a "legendary figure in comparative political science", joined this mess. Imperial Requiem is also bothered by the news. Dave Gwydion's informer who attended the meeting adds some details. Glenn Reynolds from the ultra-popular blog Instapundit.com informs that "conservatives chortle" and quotes Stanley Kurtz who says:

 

    * I think the vote of no confidence in Lawrence Summers is a wonderful thing. Harvard continues to discredit itself with the American public. The faculty is trapped. If Summers resigns, this extraordinary example of political correctness will come back to haunt Harvard, and the entire academy, for years. But if Summers hangs on, the faculty itself will have been humiliated–checked by the very fact of public scrutiny. Either way, Harvard is tearing itself apart. So long as the public simply writes of the academy, the mice can play. But the intense public scrutiny in this case puts the captains of political correctness into a no-win situation. Like the closely watched Susan Estrich fiasco, this battle is doing lasting damage to the cultural left. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

 

Reynolds adds:

 

    * Summers is an awfully smart man. Could this have been his plan all along?

 

Well, guys, I am sure that you may have a lot of fun if you have nothing to do with Harvard today (yes, I know that Stanley Kurtz is both an alumnus as well as a former Harvard professor, greetings!) and if you view Harvard as a uniform body of self-described politically correct communist feminist intellectuals. Aren't you also forgetting about the 185 people who voted against the resolutions?

 

John Lott says:

 

    * It shows just how far out of it academia is when they view even a liberal democrat such as Larry Summers as unacceptable.

 

Nathaniel Ward describes the act as follows:

 

    * In a shocking display of political correctness, the Harvard faculty has voted a lack of confidence in President Larry Summers. The move is not entirely "unexpected," as the Harvard Crimson called it, but it is silly and petty.

 

The number of articles upset about the vote is just too large, so let me pick a few more random ones:

 

    * Trucker's corner not only calls the vote "idiotic" but it also mentions some not completely flattering memoirs.

    * Also, Justin Appletonian says that something is gravely wrong.

    * Florida pilot says that PC wolves on the prowl take on one of their own.

    * Brad from Lips Brothers is convinced that he must be missing something because he can't understand how could the statements on genders be the reason.

    * Scared Monkeys salute me and 184 of my soulmates. ;-)

    * The Armchair genius finds the comparison of the votes related to Summers and Churchill humorous, and calls Harvard "the bastion of regulated expression".

    * Andi's World calls "stop the madness" and he thinks that Harvard needs testosterone.

    * Brian Larson says that Summers needs a blog.

    * Joe Gandelman, the moderate voice, talks about "PC hell at Harvard".

    * Moon over Pitsburgh argues that suppressing free speech is against what this country should be all about.

    * Neil Boortz describes the Larry Summers jihad.

 

Will from Houston translates the second resolution by Prof. Skocpol as follows:

 

    * We, the Enlightened Few in the Holy Faculty of Arts and Sciences, condemn Mr. Lawrence Summers for engaging in improper mental exercises such as logical thought and noncompliance with Received Progressive Widsom. We hope that, in the future, Mr. Summers will learn his place and not pretend that Harvard University tolerates such heresy.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/03/sad-day-for-harvard.html

It's horrible that the Harvard faculty decided to punish Pres. Summers for DARING to argue that there might be legitimate genetic differences that might explain why women are "under-represented" in the upper echelons of the hard sciences, even though it's a legitimate question to ask.

 

And it is fascinating to remember WHO are the ones leading the charge and how bizarre it is that Larry gets the heat that the Harvard faculty lacks

 

The faculty's vote is irrelevant (they can't fire him), but it should scare people that the faculty is all-too-willing to silence differing viewpoints.

-=Mike

[Ripper 0]

No its not horrible. he is a dumbass for saying it. he is the head of a educational instution and no matter if he meant it or not, suggested that the female students are not going to do as well or succeed as far as the male students due to gentic reasons. This is fine if a professor says this, but to he the head of the institution, certain statements are unacceptable and this is one of them. If a 5th grade teacher believes this and tells his class this, he too should be repremanded, it creates a overall insult to the female students. Call it political correctness all you want, no one is saying he doens't have the right to believe this, but as the person that male and female students are supposed to look up to, it is not acceptable for him to tell part of his student body that they are genetically inferior.

[Vyce 0]

What's funny is that I think I read in the Washington Post some time back (or maybe it was their free daily, "The Express") that, in regards to Summers remarks, there were quite a few researchers who had come out in his defense to state that indeed there ARE differences in the genders in lines of academic achievement (although to be fair, actual intelligence is even between the two).

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I was under the impression that the meeting itself was some big brainstorming session where all ideas were fair game. As long as you did offend anybody, of course...

[Special K 0]

It's been backed up in every study I've seen that men are better at or more inclined to math and science, and women are better at language and the liberal arts, with the two being basicall equal in things like business that mixes the two.

He wouldn't have gotten in the same shit if he had made disctinctions about left- and right-handed people.

It was perhaps stupid to say these things publically, but it's nothing he should lose his job over.

 

Ripper, if he had said left-handed people do better in liberal arts, and right-handed people do better in math and science, should he be fired? I'm left-handed. I can take it.

[EricMM 0]

He's an idiot because he raised an outdated and wrongheaded idea.

 

There are huge differences between how boys and girls, men and women think. This is mostly because young girls are basically taught from the age of three to be nurterers (sp?) and young boys are taught to be like either football players or engineers and CS majors.

[Ripper 0]

It's been backed up in every study I've seen that men are better at or more inclined to math and science, and women are better at language and the liberal arts, with the two being basicall equal in things like business that mixes the two.

He wouldn't have gotten in the same shit if he had made disctinctions about left- and right-handed people.

It was perhaps stupid to say these things publically, but it's nothing he should lose his job over.

 

Ripper, if he had said left-handed people do better in liberal arts, and right-handed people do better in math and science, should he be fired? I'm left-handed. I can take it.

I could take if the president got on television and said white people are smarter than black people. Doesn't mean it would be okay if he did. What a single person can take means jack shit.

 

Men genetically being better at math and science is not a scientific fact, like it or not, and someone in the position of the leader of a educational institution should not be stating it. Its not the fact that he said it or believed it, my problem is his position and THEN him stating it.

 

he is supposed to be the person that both male and female students should look to in their pursuit of academic excellence, and he should be cognizant of his position and realize what the repercussions might be and how his statement might be viewed amongst the female students perusing jobs in those fields at Harvard. He essentially told a group of the students HE is supposed to lead that they are genetically inferior to another group of students HE is supposed to lead. Like I said, big fucking whoop if a professor said it, he is not supposed to be the leader of the student body. this was the president of the school.

[Guest Loss]

The differences are probably 90% societal and environmental.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Both camps are correct, but Harvard's acting like a bunch of fools. I'm so glad I didn't go there, and I could have. Ha!

 

There *ARE* genetic differences between men and women. There *ARE* genetic differences between white and black. There *ARE* genetic differences between those with red hair and those with black hair. There are genetic differences between any one person on this world and any of the other 6 billion or so people.

 

That is the basis for predispositions. Then, environmental differences can account for the development of such people from their initial starting point.

 

It's this whole idea of nature vs. nuture. Mr Summers point had nothing to do with genetic inferiority, in fact, it states quite the opposite. Those who read his statements as such get carried away in powerful popular rhetoric from those who don't understand the issue he was trying to get it. No matter our best efforts to bring equality to the sexes, races, children, religious, whatever category you wish to delineate yourself on, we will all never be *equal*.

 

You see, the point in the end, that I think Mr. Summers was going for, was that you have to make sure that society allows every the opportunity to discover themselves. For those girls who are good at science, go forth. For those men good at writing, go forth. Equal opportunity, something that is not given as much as we would hope in our society.

 

You can't force equality in nature when nature itself is not equal.

 

As an economist, I can understand that while we all may start in different places, the true crime is to block one's attempt to go with what they do best. That is non-optimizing. Truth be told, we've perverted feminism, we've become drunk with empowerment, and enslaved to soundbytes, not research.

 

Why? So people such as the Harvard faculty can have their 15 minutes of dogmatic superiority for ego masterbation.

 

For shame.

[Guest MikeSC]

No its not horrible. he is a dumbass for saying it. he is the head of a educational instution and no matter if he meant it or not, suggested that the female students are not going to do as well or succeed as far as the male students due to gentic reasons. This is fine if a professor says this, but to he the head of the institution, certain statements are unacceptable and this is one of them. If a 5th grade teacher believes this and tells his class this, he too should be repremanded, it creates a overall insult to the female students.

Thing is, Ripper, this is an Ivy League school. Do you really want to limit the scope of academic discussion? It's not like he was discussing women as being inferior ---- he was stating something that HAS been the subject of scientific discussion for years now.

 

He was simply asking why women are under-represented in the upper echelons of science. He wasn't saying women are inferior or that women can't do it. He was saying that women tend to gravitate towards certain fields, and that there is a reason for it. And that genetics might be a PART of that reason.

 

And the MIT professor who brought this topic to the public, quite frankly, put the cause of women in academics back at least 40 years.

Call it political correctness all you want, no one is saying he doens't have the right to believe this, but as the person that male and female students are supposed to look up to, it is not acceptable for him to tell part of his student body that they are genetically inferior.

He didn't say that. By any stretch. And the chilling impact this has on scientific disciplines in academia make me wonder if spending taxpayer money on colleges is worth the investment any longer.

He's an idiot because he raised an outdated and wrongheaded idea.

In what way? There are still studies being done on the genetic differences between men and women. Is it so hard to fathom that men's superiority in spatial reasoning might well be a reason why they tend to do better in the hard sciences?

Men genetically being better at math and science is not a scientific fact, like it or not, and someone in the position of the leader of a educational institution should not be stating it. Its not the fact that he said it or believed it, my problem is his position and THEN him stating it.

I won't post the ENTIRE speech, but it is here:

http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html

 

But, some excerpts:

There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I'll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.

In his OWN words, he doesn't feel genetic differences are the biggest single reason for the disparity.

 

And this:

The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I'm focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they're all over the map, depends on which test, whether it's math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn't be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end. Now, it's pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people's ability to do that. And that's absolutely right. But I don't think that resolves the issue at all. Because if my reading of the data is right-it's something people can argue about-that there are some systematic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well. So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.

 

There may also be elements, by the way, of differing, there is some, particularly in some attributes, that bear on engineering, there is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization. I just returned from Israel, where we had the opportunity to visit a kibbutz, and to spend some time talking about the history of the kibbutz movement, and it is really very striking to hear how the movement started with an absolute commitment, of a kind one doesn't encounter in other places, that everybody was going to do the same jobs. Sometimes the women were going to fix the tractors, and the men were going to work in the nurseries, sometimes the men were going to fix the tractors and the women were going to work in the nurseries, and just under the pressure of what everyone wanted, in a hundred different kibbutzes, each one of which evolved, it all moved in the same direction. So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize. There are two other hypotheses that are all over. One is socialization. Somehow little girls are all socialized towards nursing and little boys are socialized towards building bridges. No doubt there is some truth in that. I would be hesitant about assigning too much weight to that hypothesis for two reasons. First, most of what we've learned from empirical psychology in the last fifteen years has been that people naturally attribute things to socialization that are in fact not attributable to socialization. We've been astounded by the results of separated twins studies. The confident assertions that autism was a reflection of parental characteristics that were absolutely supported and that people knew from years of observational evidence have now been proven to be wrong. And so, the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it, and it often turns out not to be true. The second empirical problem is that girls are persisting longer and longer. When there were no girls majoring in chemistry, when there were no girls majoring in biology, it was much easier to blame parental socialization. Then, as we are increasingly finding today, the problem is what's happening when people are twenty, or when people are twenty-five, in terms of their patterns, with which they drop out. Again, to the extent it can be addressed, it's a terrific thing to address.

 

His speech is lengthy, but it has been demonized and statements not made by him have been erroneously attributed to him. Read the entire speech, because the statements some here have made have very little correlation with Summers ACTUAL statements.

-=Mike

[Guest Loss]

Ok, I'll ask this. What's the purpose of doing this research anyway? What benefit does it serve? Wouldn't it just demoralize aspiring female scientists? Even if there is truth in it, does it serve any real, tangible purpose outside of pissing everyone off?

[Guest MikeSC]

Ok, I'll ask this. What's the purpose of doing this research anyway? What benefit does it serve? Wouldn't it just demoralize aspiring female scientists? Even if there is truth in it, does it serve any real, tangible purpose outside of pissing everyone off?

Um, science's goal is supposed to be a pursuit of truth; not a pursuit of only HAPPY truth. I could ask what the benefit of trying to determine if homosexuality is genetic or a choice and it'd fit into your criteria here to a tee.

 

FACT: Women are not in the upper echelons of science.

 

You'd rather go with happy misconceptions and myths rather than actually figure out the truth as to why?

 

Nobody is saying that women are inferior. Nobody is even implying that.

 

Do you really wish to not pursue the truth if the answer might make somebody upset?

 

This is an Ivy League school where the faculty -- many of whom have issues of their own that look bad --- is saying that SOME research shouldn't be done because it's politically unpopular.

 

God only knows where we'd be if studies on blacks were stopped years ago because they were politically unpopular.

-=Mike

[Guest Cerebus]

The free expression of ideas continues unabated.

[Guest MikeSC]

The free expression of ideas continues unabated.

Not in this case it doesn't. The faculty wants Summers to be FIRED because he dared to speculate on something that they find politically unpopular.

 

If colleges will silence all views that go against the popular sentiments, then cut all public funding and treat them like think tanks, because it is ALL they'd be from that point on.

-=Mike

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Ultimately this really won't matter, because Summers likely won't be fired. Perhaps he'll issue an apology and state that he's disappointed his comments were construed as they were. Those considering a no-confidence vote at a single university(faculty senates don't get to make these decisions anyway) to be the downfall of all discourse in academia are blowing this way out of proportion.

[Guest MikeSC]

Ultimately this really won't matter, because Summers likely won't be fired. Perhaps he'll issue an apology and state that he's disappointed his comments were construed as they were.

He's apologized, fairly non-stop, since he made the comments.

 

That was his biggest mistake. He should have NEVER apologized.

Those considering a no-confidence vote at a single university(faculty senates don't get to make these decisions anyway) to be the downfall of all discourse in academia are blowing this way out of proportion.

When you have PROFESSORS, whose goal is supposed to be to enlighten people about the truth, deciding that some truth doesn't need to investigated, you have a HUGE problem.

-=Mike

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

When you have PROFESSORS, whose goal is supposed to be to enlighten people about the truth, deciding that some truth doesn't need to investigated, you have a HUGE problem.

-=Mike

Since he's issued apologies, he certainly won't be fired, so don't sweat it. Additionally, these professors aren't deciding that "some truth doesn't need to be investigated." That's an awfully big inference to make in a no-confidence vote where a significant minority voted against the no-confidence statement (eyeballing it looks to be about 45% on the first resolution, 35% on the second), and an even bigger inference to make about the universal academic community.

[Vyce 0]

The free expression of ideas continues unabated.

Not in this case it doesn't. The faculty wants Summers to be FIRED because he dared to speculate on something that they find politically unpopular.

Now, I may not be reading all of the facts correctly, but from what I understand them to be, all of this uproar is about comments this guy made, when those comments in question actually seem to be SUPPORTED by the existing research.

 

In which case, everyone at Harvard seems to be more than willing to stick their heads in the sands over this controversy simply because what he said offends their sensibilities.

[2GOLD 0]

In which case, everyone at Harvard seems to be more than willing to stick their heads in the sands over this controversy simply because what he said offends their sensibilities.

 

Well, it is Harvard for crying out loud. As much as his opinion may be unpopular, all angles should be explored even if they sound stupid and offensive. Guess Harvard forgot that part.

 

If he's false, then you have a discussion about it and prove it to be 100% false. It's the only way to advance discussion on the subject and see if real answers exist.

 

Personally, I don't agree with him but it's a point worth looking into in a mass group of professors. If anything, it could put that idea to bed instead of leaving it out there.

 

If "because men are in charge", thereby accusing every man on the planet of being a dog is an acceptable discussion point then why not this one?

[Guest MikeSC]

When you have PROFESSORS, whose goal is supposed to be to enlighten people about the truth, deciding that some truth doesn't need to investigated, you have a HUGE problem.

            -=Mike

Since he's issued apologies, he certainly won't be fired, so don't sweat it. Additionally, these professors aren't deciding that "some truth doesn't need to be investigated." That's an awfully big inference to make in a no-confidence vote where a significant minority voted against the no-confidence statement (eyeballing it looks to be about 45% on the first resolution, 35% on the second), and an even bigger inference to make about the universal academic community.

The problem is a MAJORITY voted FOR it --- when there is actual scientific study done on this topic all of the time and nothing Summers said was insulting.

 

Academia has, in my opinion, become a haven for far-left wing idealogues with vastly overrated intellect and a near utter lack of intellectual curiosity. It's become an echo chamber which, at the bare minimum, isn't serving the students properly.

 

They COULD make it a point to actually pursue IDEALOGICAL diversity rather than racial diversity --- but I have no hope, whatsoever, of that ever happening. That could resolve a lot of the problems and excesses of academia, but won't happen.

-=Mike

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Good thing Summers didn't say anything about the media and black quarterbacks.

 

And I really can't feel bad for the guy considering he's a hippie as well -- you created the monster, now deal with it...

[Guest MikeSC]

Good thing Summers didn't say anything about the media and black quarterbacks.

 

And I really can't feel bad for the guy considering he's a hippie as well -- you created the monster, now deal with it...

Well, it does show how much the "Free speech" crowd of the 1960's really believes in their ideals.

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

What exactly did this guy say?

 

Because I get the feeling that his words have been twisted against him, since everything I hear is "Ivy League dude says men are smarter than women OMG FEMINIST RAGE"

[Guest MikeSC]

What exactly did this guy say?

 

Because I get the feeling that his words have been twisted against him, since everything I hear is "Ivy League dude says men are smarter than women OMG FEMINIST RAGE"

http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html

-=Mike

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

He made some remarks about "why aren't there any Jew farmers/Catholic bankers/etc..."