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Crimson Recriminations Larry Summers Vs ments and feedback from readers. Andrew Sullivan, complained last May Glenn Reynolds, the University of about his grueling schedule and won- Tennessee law professor who writes dered “what the half-life of a blogger the popular Instapundit blog, told is.” (He seems to have found out: In Wired News last summer that he gets February, he announced a hiatus from e-mails from people asking if he’s blogging.) A huge number of blogs— alright if he hasn’t posted in several the majority, in fact—are abandoned hours. With his hundreds of thousands within just a few months. of readers every day, Reynolds some- This doesn’t mean that blogging times says he feels like a “public utili- must always be terribly demanding—it ty.” Another blogger, James Lileks, need not be if the blogger does not described the demands of the blogging wish it to be—or that bloggers neces- routine: “This is an odd hobby. It’s like sarily put themselves at personal risk. having a train set, a gigantic train set Rather, it suggests that blogging is not in the basement, and in the morning for everyone, and that as this new you not only find a derailment, you medium develops and comes fully into find people streaming out of the tiny its own, those suited to take part will houses yelling at you.” slowly separate themselves from those And some finally succumb to “blog not made for the blogosphere, and this fatigue” and give up. Describing the medium, too, will turn out to be only wearying interaction that led him to for those of a certain stripe. And in an quit blogging, Steven Den Beste said, age where everyone can try their hand “nearly every article I write draws at journalism and where private diaries anywhere from five to fifty letters con- are published for the world to see, it is taining corrections, disagreements, also the case that every aspect of life comments about things I ‘left out’ can be put under the spotlight, often in because ‘I didn’t know,’ or other forms ways that are deforming, perverse, and of kibitzing.” Another blogger, downright stupid. Crimson Recriminations Larry Summers vs. The Harvard Feminists arvard University president crucial objective of diversity.” But Lawrence Summers began his Summers then proceeded to discuss Hnow-infamous talk at the some of the possible differences National Bureau of Economic Re- between the sexes—both natural and search blandly enough. “I am speaking social—and so began the latest aca- unofficially and not using this as an demic tempest in a crimson teapot. occasion to lay out the many things Summers’s remarks are worth quot- we’re doing at Harvard to promote the ing at some length. As a possible SPRING 2005 ~ 109 Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. explanation for why more men than understanding what they are, and women reach the top of certain profes- working very hard to address them.” sions, he said the following: “It is a fact He also reminded his audience that his about our society that [there] is a level intention was to stimulate discussion of commitment that a much higher by making some broad and controver- fraction of married men have been his- sial claims about differences between torically prepared to make than … men and women, which was, after all, married women. That’s not a judg- the subject of the conference. ment about how it should be, not a Although the study of sex differ- judgment about what they should ences is a controversial area of expect. But it seems to me that it is research, nothing Summers said was very hard to look at the data and outrageously off the mark given the escape the conclusion that that expec- findings of many economists, sociolo- tation is meeting with the choices that gists, neurologists, and psychiatrists people make and is contributing sub- about the innate differences between stantially to the outcomes that we men and women. In economics, observe.” Claudia Goldin and many others have On the specific question of why there studied women’s choices about hours are not as many women at the very top of work and willingness to travel and of certain fields of science and engi- work overtime, and this research has neering, Summers said this: “So my shown how important these choices best guess, to provoke you, of what’s are in determining their future salaries behind all of this is that the largest and promotions. Other researchers in phenomenon, by far, is the general recent years have identified so-called clash between people’s legitimate fam- “leaking pipelines” for women in many ily desires and employers’ current professions—high-achieving women desire for high power and high intensi- who scale back on their work to care ty, that in the special case of science for aging parents or young children. and engineering, there are issues of As for sex differences in mathemat- intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of ics, researchers agree that there is a the variability of aptitude, and that stubborn but persistent trend: Men those considerations are reinforced by tend to cluster at the very highest and what are in fact lesser factors involv- the very lowest points on the bell ing socialization and continuing dis- curve of mathematical ability, while crimination.” women skew more towards the center. Throughout his talk, Summers took So while the people who perform most care to offer various disclaimers: “I brilliantly in math are more likely to be would like nothing better than to be men, so, too, are the most deficient. proved wrong, because I would like Even within science, women continue nothing better than for these problems to choose different specialties than to be addressable simply by everybody men do: “46 percent of biologists and 110 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. 30 percent of environmental scientists platter the head of any prominent aca- are women,” Robert Samuelson noted demic figure who dares to suggest that in the Washington Post. “Over time, these differences might partially tastes may change, but the idea that explain different outcomes between men and women should be equally rep- men and women. It is the second of resented in all occupations is unrealis- these reasons that explains why tic and undesirable. Choices differ Summers has had to issue a surfeit of because men and women differ.” apologies, endure the haranguing of Despite the fact that such sex differ- Harvard professors at several special- ences have been discussed for decades ly-convened faculty meetings, and oth- by researchers (and recently given erwise adopt the penitent role of the excellent book-length treatment by public figure humbled by the enormity University of Virginia professor of his error. The irony of elite femi- Stephen Rhoads in Taking Sex nists calling for a colleague to be Differences Seriously), M.I.T. professor silenced—feminists who so often claim Nancy Hopkins, who received an ava- unfair silencing at the hands of a patri- lanche of publicity a few years ago for archal establishment—is rich indeed. her self-proclaimed crusade against It is perhaps fitting to give the last “unconscious” gender bias at her own word on the Summers imbroglio to university, had an attack of the vapors Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, upon hearing Summers’s speech: “I felt who wrote the following in the Weekly I was going to be sick,” she told the Standard about the recent faculty meet- Washington Post. “My heart was pound- ings/therapy sessions/public lynch- ing and my breath was shallow. I was ings where Summers was so vigorous- extremely upset.” Of course, poor Ms. ly attacked: “The issue of Summers’s Hopkins was able to recover herself supposedly intimidating style of gover- quickly enough to speed-dial at least nance is really the issue of the political half a dozen reporters and comment correctness by which Summers has on the record about Summers’s been intimidated. Political correctness remarks for the next day’s papers. is the leading form of intimidation in The tempest that followed grew all of American education today, and largely for two reasons: First, as head this incident at Harvard is a pure case of one of the nation’s most elite insti- of it. The phrase has been around since tutions of higher learning, and a man the 1980s, and the media have become with an often abrasive style of debate, bored with it. But the fact of political Summers is a delicious target. Second, correctness is before us in the refusal of academia is still shot through with fac- feminist women professors even to ulty members who embrace a radical consider the possibility that women feminist ideology that not only refuses might be at any natural disadvantage to accept the findings of science about in mathematics as compared with men. sex differences, but also demands on a No, more than that: They refuse to SPRING 2005 ~ 111 Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. allow that possibility to be entertained problem, nameless no longer: the reign even in a private meeting. And still of illiberalism, the triumph of emotion more: They are not ashamed to be seen over science, and the appeal of ideolog- as suppressing any inquiry into such a ical simplicity over the complex possibility.” Here, then, is the feminist realities of human nature. ‘A Profound Loss as a Culture’ Debating Copyright in the Digital Age n March 3, 2005, Stanford Law pening now.
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