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On Lawrence Summers, Women, and Science: Changing Debates About the Biology of Sex Differences at Harvard Since 1969 a Thesis Pr On Lawrence Summers, Women, and Science: Changing Debates About the Biology of Sex Differences at Harvard Since 1969 A thesis presented by Hana Rachel Alberts to The Department of the History of Science in partial fulfillment for an honors degree in History and Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2006 On Lawrence Summers, Women, and Science: Changing Debates About the Biology of Sex Differences at Harvard Since 1969 By Hana Rachel Alberts Abstract Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, delivered a speech in January 2005 that posited differences in intrinsic aptitude between men and women as an explanation for why women are underrepresented among science and engineering professors. He was harshly chastised for these remarks. This thesis attempts to understand the outcry and what it reveals about how Harvard as a community responds to biological explanations for sex differences today. A careful comparison between the Summers debate and two analogous controversies of the 1970s – set off by Arthur Jensen’s theories on the heritability of intelligence and E.O. Wilson’s manifesto on sociobiology – shows that Harvard has in fact warmed to theories of this nature. The last chapter of this thesis contains interviews with eighteen current and emeritus professors, who offer their perspectives on how the shift documented by the reaction to Summers’ comments is writ large in Harvard’s curriculum and in the general sentiment of the community. Ironically enough, for an event that caused such a firestorm, the historical comparison and the anecdotal evidence from interviews converge to indicate Harvard’s increasing willingness to accept biological explanations for sex differences. Keywords Sex Differences, Race Differences, Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, Women and Science Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Chapter One, “The Resistance to Race and Gender as a Biological Category, 1969-1984: The Cases of Arthur Jensen and Edward O. Wilson” . 8 The Rise of the Environmentalist Paradigm . 11 The IQ Debates: Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and the Heritability of Intelligence . 15 Sociobiology and Its Discontents . 20 ‘Feminists Taking Up The Cudgel’ . 27 Chapter Two, “The Controversy Over Sex Differences After 1/14: A Continuation of or Departure From Past Debates?” . 33 A New Decade, A New Science of Sex Differences . 34 A Study in Contrast: The Bell Curve . 41 Steven Pinker and his Penchant for Popularizing . 44 The Speech and Its Aftermath: Questioning a Diminished ‘Nurture’ . 46 A Divided Faculty Moved On to Bigger Issues . 51 Taking Stock: The Faculty . 56 Whither Student Activism? . 58 Taking Stock: The Students . 61 By Spring, The Topic Turned to Science . 62 On Summers and Science: Old Wine, New Bottles . 67 Chapter Three, “What Did It All Mean?: The Case for a Biological Turn at Harvard” . 69 ‘If Steven Pinker Says Something…’. 70 In the Classroom . 74 ‘We’re in a Biological Cycle’ . 80 Appendix A, “Full Transcript of Lawrence Summers’ Remarks” . 91 Appendix B, “Research Supporting Lawrence Summers’ Remarks” . 102 Annotated Bibliography . 106 Acknowledgements From the conception of this project to the final draft on acid-free, 100 percent cotton paper, this thesis would not have been possible without the constant guidance of my advisor, the inimitable Anne Harrington. The third chapter of this thesis is largely comprised of interviews. Eighteen current and emeritus professors took time out of their busy schedules to speak with me, and for this I am grateful to John Dowling, Melissa Franklin, Evelynn Hammonds, Marc Hauser, Dudley Herschbach, Nancy Hopkins, Ruth Hubbard, Jerome Kagan, Richard Lewontin, Louis Menand, Everett Mendelsohn, Steven Pinker, Alan Richardson, Charles Rosenberg, Ullica Segerstråle, Elizabeth Spelke, Robert Trivers, and Richard Wrangham. For their advice and support, my eternal gratitude goes to my momma, Rosanne Alberts, my senior thesis seminar leader, Steven Shapin, the History of Science departmental staff, especially Alice Belser and Peter Buck, Widener reference librarian Frederic Burchsted, the staff of the Harvard University Archives, the women of Mather 401-435, the Mather Dining Hall staff, font guru David Paltiel, the Colin S. Kelly ’05 thesis editing party team of Alexandra Atiya, Alison Damaskos, Matthew Gartland, Robert Koenig, Marc Luff, Sarah Murphy, Jessica Rubin-Wills, and Wendy Widman, and, last but not least, for his discerning eye, Steve Marks. 1 1 [T]he question of interest is no longer whether human social behavior is genetically determined; it is to what extent. The accumulated evidence for a large hereditary component is more detailed and compelling than most persons, including even geneticists, realize. I will go further: it already is decisive.1 E.O. Wilson We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.2 Stephen Jay Gould [T]he field of behavioral genetics had a revolution in the last fifteen years, and the principal thrust of that revolution was the discovery that a large number of things that people thought were due to socialization weren’t, and were in fact due to more intrinsic human nature, and that set of discoveries, it seemed to me, ought to influence the way one thought about other areas.3 Lawrence Summers Introduction On Friday, January 14, 2005, Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, delivered what he hoped would be a provocative speech at a conference organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The topic was diversity in the science and engineering workforce. In the informal lunchtime talk, which he presented to an auditorium of about forty university professors and administrators, he listed three hypotheses as to why women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of math and science fields in the academy. First, he said that those professorships call for a time-consuming workweek that women with children might be reluctant to take. Second, he said that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” could shed light on the disparity. In other words, he aired the theory that there are comparatively fewer women in those positions because they have less aptitude for math and 1 E.O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) 19. 2 Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man: The Definitive Refutation to the Authors of The Bell Curve (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981, revised and expanded, 1996) 50. 3 Lawrence Summers, “Remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass., 14 January 2005. http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html . Accessed 25 January 2006. 1 science at the highest levels, a phenomenon influenced by their biological predispositions or genetic makeups. Third, he said that socialization – what roles society encourages or rewards women to take on – and discrimination in hiring processes together make up a third factor that contributes to the discrepancy. In his opinion, he listed the factors in their order of importance. This ranking proved controversial. Widely perceived as inflammatory, these comments ricocheted worldwide. A Lexis-Nexis archive search turns up 337 reports by major newspapers between that Friday afternoon in January and March 14, the date two months hence. Smaller papers, magazines, and blogs also sounded off on the speech. The Boston Globe first reported Summers’ remarks on Monday, January 17, and within one week, newspapers from as far afield as Australia, England, Ireland, and Singapore had gotten wind of the story and printed it on their pages. Meanwhile, back on Summers’ own campus, distinct groups of critics and supporters emerged. Professors and students at Harvard were appalled at the implications of the remarks themselves and the idea that a university president would dare to utter them. The thought of a biological explanation for sex differences in cognitive ability did not sit well with them.4 Summers’ critics feared that claims for innate differences between the sexes inevitably served as fodder for those looking for any excuse to discriminate against women. These ideas had a tainted past, for Summers’ adult critics recalled the historical legacy of the Nazis’ so-called science of racial differences, as well as more personal memories of the ways in which 4 A few words on my chosen terminology: I have opted to use the phrase “sex differences,” rather than “gender differences.” Most scientists and other major players in the debates I discuss use “sex differences.” The term “gender differences” emerged in the 1970s as a way to push back against what feminists saw as reductionist biological notions of maleness and femaleness and embrace an environmentalist explanation. A belief in social constructivism is implicit in the word “gender.” In addition, when I mention “biological explanations” of any sort, I am referring to the influence of both evolutionary and genetic forces. While genetic explanations are proximate and mechanistic, evolutionary explanations are ultimate and adaptive. Within the studies of intelligence and the disciplines of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which I address in this thesis, the position that any trait or behavior is rooted in biology generally refers to a combination of both levels of explanation. 2 behavioral genetics had been used to make sense of disparities in IQ test performance between back and white schoolchildren. Still more recently, controversial sociobiological theories had appeared to offer a genetic-evolutionary explanation for traditional female social roles. These kinds of claims did not sit well with the aggressive feminism of the time, and any hint of their resurgence still raises red flags for people who came of age during that era. In contrast, other professors and students defended Summers on the grounds that he had a right to say what he said in an environment of free and open inquiry.
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