Rather than pontificate at length about the successful coup against Lawrence Summers by the perpetually “powerless” forces within university humanities departments (who, as anyone not a reactionary conservative will assure you, is perfectly ideologically balanced and has no particular political agenda or ax to grind), I thought I’d simply link and excerpt from a few pieces commenting on Summers’ dismissal.
First, here’s Alan Dershowitz, quoted by the WaPo:
“It’s a real tragedy for Harvard,” said Alan Dershowitz, law professor of long-standing at Harvard and a Summers supporter. “It says that one group of faculty managed a coup d’etat not only against Summers but against the whole Harvard community. He is widely supported among students and in the graduate schools.”
By a three-to-one margin, undergraduates polled online by the Harvard Crimson this week do not think Summers should resign, with only 19% supporting his departure. More than half of the students who responded to the poll, about 57 percent, said he should remain.
…and here’s Dershowitz again, in a Boston Globe editorial:
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes, in general, some of the most radical, hard-left elements within Harvard’s diverse constituencies. And let there be no mistake about the origin of Summers’s problem with that particular faculty: It started as a hard left-center conflict. Summers committed the cardinal sin against the academic hard left: He expressed politically incorrect views regarding gender, race, religion, sexual preference, and the military.
[…]
Radical academics do not, of course, burn down buildings, at least not since the 1970s. Instead they introduce motions of no confidence and demand resignations of those who offend their sensibilities (while insisting on complete freedom of speech for those with whom they agree—free speech for me but not for thee!).
These sentiments sound familiar to me, but thankfully, this time they come from someone who can hardly be called a “failed academic” – and may, in fact, represent the very “elitists” whom I was earlier accused (falsely and incoherently, given my actual position) of criticizing as a group.
For good measure, Dershowitz added, while doing the Paul Sullivan Show on WBZ radio in Boston last evening that “the inmates are running the asylum.” And then there’s this, from his Globe editorial: “This is truly a time of crisis for Harvard. The crisis is over whether a politically correct straightjacket will be placed over the thinking of everybody in this institution by one segment of the faculty.
Well, sure. But this goes far beyond Harvard and Larry Summers. It is a problem that exists, as I’ve been saying over and over again, at the very heart of our current cultural identity. It is the face, in fact, of the new western liberalism—one that, thanks to years of undermining by linguisticly incoherent ideas of epistemology (and the public policy that proceeded from such carefully manipulated anti-individualist nonsense) is only barely holding on to the classic liberal ideals of liberty and individual rights that are supposed to inform and solidify it.
As an added bonus, here’s today’s Daily Standard on the Summers dismissal (which provides a bit more background on the entirety of Summers’ tenure):
[…] Summers already had a sizeable group of enemies by the time he stood before an academic conference and mused that a contributing factor to the under-representation of women in the hard sciences might perhaps be due to different intrinsic abilities between the sexes. The furor that followed wasn’t really caused by these comments. As even his fiercest critics conceded at the time, it was merely “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
The net result of that controversy was the faculty narrowly passing a no-confidence referendum on Summers’s leadership. That was almost a year ago.
Summers waged a contrition campaign which lasted for almost a year. He repeatedly apologized for his comments and avoided any of the blunt utterances that had previously characterized his tenure. His name faded from the newspapers and when it did appear it was because Summers was doing something typical of university presidents, such as announcing a fund-raising coup—as he did when Saudi Prince Alwaleed bestowed $20 million on the university for its Department of Middle Eastern Studies. (Alwaleed had previously earned a measure of infamy shortly after 9/11 when New York mayor Rudy Giuliani rejected his $10 million gift to help rebuild New York because of offensive comments he had made regarding America’s foreign policy and Israel.)
This campaign to save his job, however, was doomed from the start. Summers’s detractors on the faculty were quite clear all along that there was no way their relationship with their president could be mended.
[…] Professor Ruth Wisse, perhaps Summers’s most vocal champion, expressed dismay that he apologized for comments that were “unexceptional.” Like many of Summers’s supporters, Wisse had several occasions for disappointment as Summers scrambled to make amends with the faculty.
At some point it had to become apparent that having a faculty that loathed its president was untenable for Harvard. In a battle to the death between the faculty and the president, the president never had a chance.
Where does Harvard go from here? Professor Wisse is not sanguine about what Summers’s abdication portends for the university. She suggests that the issues in dire need of addressing regard the faculty, not the outgoing president. As she notes, it is indeed a bizarre circumstance that the Harvard faculty, which was so vocal about its president’s every putatively offensive utterance has expressed no qualms about accepting Prince Alwaleed’s largesse, nor any curiosity regarding how the Saudi prince’s gift will be used.
And what of the student body? In a development that seems to have surprised virtually all Crimson observers, only 19 percent of Harvard undergrads thought Summers should resign.
This poll perhaps signifies the contradiction at the heart of the modern academy. Students think universities should focus on educating their charges. Undergrads know, however, that their famous professors are often far more interested in their scholarship than in teaching. Summers was probably popular amongst the undergraduates because they knew he was their champion.
Summers’s resignation is a sign that, at least at Harvard, the professoriate will brook no dissent on their view of the university system.
Of course, this could all be just another example of rightwing paranoia—or, if you prefer, an outlier case in a largely equitable univerity culture that promotes lively debate and rhetorical engagements.
But to argue such is becoming increasingly ridiculous, no matter how often you sneer at point at the whiny, fascist fundies or David Horowitz, and dismiss out of hand the very thought that such educated folk as humanities professors, many of whose very academic identities rely on a sustained critique of individualism, would consciously or otherwise circle the wagons and try to lay claim to what might just be the very last unmolested bastion of progressive philosophical thought that can be forcibly claim a captive audience.
(h/t Terry Hastings and Tom Elia)
****
update: For more, see Cathy Young and Stanley Kurtz.
He also told an audience of accomplished women his idiotically derived views on womens’ ability. Not a good manager. Not a good way to herd cats. Toss him.
Well that tears it. My kids won’t be attending Harvard. Plus the fact that I don’t have the $40K a year.
The mighty are falling, which to an optimist might seem like an opportunity. Harvard, The NY Times & the Democratic party all seem to be doing their utmost to vacate their positions as leaders in this country.
Now, I don’t think I’ve read the entire transcript containing Summers’ remarks, but most of what he said were not “idiotically derived views,” but fairly well established findings in psychometric literature.
Aside from that, he was mostly speculating on different possibilities, not making conclusions.
That is terrible news. But I found a good piece on how to expose leftist dishonesty – debate them on principle, not facts, as they simply ignore facts.
Always pose a ‘What would you do if…’ scenario, so they don’t default to their ‘hindsight is wisdom, when I do it’ tactic.
Actus, do you even know what he said? Hint: it wasn’t that women are worse at math than men.
I doubt you’d bother looking it up, so here goes. He said that there are a greater distribution of men at both extremes of mathematical and scientific ability and that this fact, combined with issues of socialization, result in a greater proportion of men at the top of the scientific and mathematic community. If you recuce this to him saying “men are better than women at math” than the correlary “men are worse than women at math” also applies.
What’s more, he said these things at a conference dedicated to exploring the lack of women representation at the top of the academic and scientific communities. If he can’t say it there, then where can he say it?
Jeff, I sense sarcasm in your post.
And actus strikes another pose. This one, however, is so archly ridiculous the audience is laughing out loud.
I scoff at this talk of Harvard. These are not the world’s greatest athletes by any stretch of the imagination.
Where’s the endurance, the hand-eye coordination, the strength et al?
*scoff*
Is Harvard even a sport? I mean really.
If the cost of free speech keeps rising at this rate, I will soon be unable to afford it.
The part with his daughters playing with trucks was particularly touching. And silly to give as a manager of an academy, to academically successful women. Not a good way to herd cats.
But this one by Jeff I find fascinating, and I would like to hear more.
Because to me Harvard attendance is not being a captive audience.
Actus – when you are a student, you are a captive audience. You got to sit and take whatever screwy thing the prof wants to do. And the students (remembering my own academic career) know it and put up with it because there isn’t much choice.
Those profs aren’t engaged in scholarship, they are engaged in showmanship. And “witch-hunting”. They just burned one in Mr. Summers.
“One of these days, they will be called to account.”
SEXIST!
Actus, you’re gay, so theoretically, you’ll never have daughters. And if by some strange alignment of the planets you did produce daughters, you’d probably put them in a meal sack and toss them into the river.
So it’s understandable that you’d demean a father talking about his children.
And I choose what school to attend, and what classes. Specially if I’m at Harvard. In my experience lots of ivy kids are whiners, but none are so self-depracting that they imagine that they had no choice but to attend the schools and courses that they take.
In my school, however, the biggest complaint came from the social science calculus requirement.
First, studies have also been done concerning the sexes’ respective choices of toys, but I don’t suspect you’ll bother to take a look at them either (besides he was only using an example from his own life to make a point).
More importantly though, why shouldn’t he be allowed to cite what research has found related to gender differences at a conference created for the sole purpose of determining why women are not as present in the “hard” sciences as men are? I’m sure the women there only wanted answers that included the word “sexism,” but can they not open their minds even slight to accept that sexism is not the only possible explanation? And to accept other explanations by no means eliminates sexism as a possible contributor. The entire response was idiotic and over the top.
And you’ve used the “Not a good way to herd cats” comment twice now. Herd them to do what, exactly? They’re academics, not worker drones. They’re supposed to be open to scholarly inquiry and debate.
I’m assuming that a president of a university is a manager. And that managing a university is hard, like herding cats. And its not up to that standard to tell a bunch of smart, accomplished women that your view of people like them in the academy is based on how your daughters like ‘daddy trucks.’ Its not good management. So… You’re fired!
Of course I’ve herd of cats.
Sheesh.
From the Boston Globe:
So, he based his comments on research he assembled, and presented it as an economist, not part of his official duties as president, and for this, he should be fired? I’m sure the reasons for his “firing” go well beyond this speech, but you seem to be justifying based on this speech, which would have been unoffensive and unremarkable except for the reaction of one female faculty member, who basically, in my opinion made women appear worse than anything Summers said.
I personally couldn’t care less about Summers, but his comments were not “idiotically derived.” The female faculty member’s response, however, was.
Good work, actus, your busted clock hit time at precisely 3;27 this afternoon.
Not a good way to heard that pussy is precisely the point.
Your shit is so baked, bro.
tw: Hotel.
herd, heard, whatever…
Larry’s mistake was expressing the limp-lobed thinking that passes for economic analysis to a bunch of real scientists. Nancy Hopkins rightly walked out on his pseudoscientific gibberish and the rest, as they say, is herstory.
Nancy flounced out, did she? A case of the vapors, no doubt.
Cordially…
Yep. Poor Nancy collapsed on the fainting couch. That Summers guy is such a brute!
Back when I thought that a brand-name edumacation would satisfy some of my self-image issues, I attended the open house at Harvard Divinity School. I wanted to know all about how many groovy ancient languages I could learn, what the theological stance of the institution was…you know, all of that learn’d stuff.
They spent most of the day parading the visitors before handpicked panels designed to show how diverse the student body was: look! We’ve got a white women who’s converted to Islam! And a Hindu! And a real African!
I didn’t give a damn how diverse the student body was. I wasn’t going to attend HDS (so I thought) to hang out with a Benneton ad.
But that, clearly, is what they valued most, and what they thought constituted their best selling point.
It was pretty much the end of my graduate ambitions.
Oh, that, and watching the WTC burn.
Interestingly, Ian, watching the WTC burn was the beginning of the end of my PhD studies, as well. I just didn’t know it at the time.
I had already passed my oral exams and my dissertation (sans intro) was written. All I needed do was learn a couple of foreign languages.
But what I saw—clearly—after 911, was the slow move from shock and hurt to rationalization, and finally, the demonization of the US. It was the beginning of the “I oppose the terrorists, but…” ethos that wormed its way into just about every discussion in every class.
In fact, our English Dept. taught a course in argument and rhetoric that suggested, as a possible course text, a collection of “response” essays to 911 that I was the only one in the Dept to point out had, as it’s ideological middle, a series of essays from Common Dreams.
The only conservative represented? Andrew Sullivan.
And my university is a fairly conservative university, with a fairly non-doctrinal English faculty (though some of the grad students were proud Marxists or Maoists, yawn).
Which is why when people on the left in the blogosphere sneer at we reactionary righties for ginning up these examples of ideological imbalance, I get a little ticked off.
Today, let these sneering ironists choke on some big old liberal Larry Summers sausage. And while they are at it, perhaps Glenn Greenwald can pen a lengthy essay on the Kult of Leftism: because, Summers, a Clinton man, was today officially booted from that particular plantation.
Heard someone today call it Summers “Jimmy the Greek” moment. And I thought that was funny, because it’s not really. But it could have been. And that would have been high-larious.
TW: indeed.
Fwah. ‘Tis all about the liberation theology, nowadays. If you’re not ‘progressive’–that is, if you don’t believe in some kind of radical government-directed income redistribution–then you’re not really pious at all, just a !hypocrite!.
What should Western religion be, outside of a few drops of holy water sprinkled on Das Kapital, and what should non-Western religion be, other than a way for the ‘other’ to ‘contest’ the Western ‘truth’ of the oppressive ‘scientific method’? (And–ooh! pretty native customs and exotic rituals for the ‘enlightened’ and ‘tolerant’ Westerner to enjoy!)
*crickets*
Yep.
My wife actually agrees with good ole Larry, and she was a Math major. I had more majors than Van Wilder.
TW: income. as in one. She’s a sex-traitor.
and not in a good way.
His fifth column stuff? Thats good stuff.
Ya. Larry Summers, Clintonian neoliberal technocrat:
Surprising people couldn’t get along with such a nice guy.
Jason –
Actus is part of the new Fascist movement. The truth is irrelevant if it might hurt someones feelings.
In the context of my life, I find this to be a wonderful axiom. Unfortunately, I have graduated from high school (at least) and realize that denial is not a reality based option.
Ahhh! To be a liberal and live in the eighth grade forever! A boner up to HERE forever!!!!
Please, Actus. What is your secret?
I bet Nancy is just beside herself on account of y’all making fun of her. But just think about it. All that needs to happen is for (1% 2%) of women to stop pretending that sexist bs from blubbery white dudes isn’t sexist bs. All she did was WALK OUT OF THE ROOM and look what happened. Who’d a thunk it would be that easy to out naked emperors?
Tantra.
Summers was taken to task primarily for the following statement:
He elaborates on the second point later in his speech, suggesting that the differences between males and females in science aptitude on the high ends is because of intrinsic aptitute. No one is saying that this question shouldn’t be addressed. But there is little/no evidence that supports the claim that this is based on aptitude. (See this debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke for a discussion of the issue).
Summers also states that intrinsic differences in aptitude are a more important factor than sex discrimination in sex disparities in the sciences. However, there is much more evidence for discrimination against women in faculty hiring than the argument re: intrinsic aptitude.
When the President of Harvard is making comments that are not supported by the evidence (and, by the way, Summers later apologized for downplaying the role of discrimination in his remarks), it casts a poor light on the University, and when done on a sensitive topic, will piss a lot of people off.
Now many have claimed that Summers comments were criticized for not being PC, or for attacking a sacred cow, or because of the leftist hegemony in the academy, etc. Instead, they were criticized because they were unsubstantiated by scientific evidence, and the President of Harvard shouldn’t be making claims that are not supported by the scientific evidence.
And as for Summers’ resignation, it was more likely due to his management style and less to do with his comments on sex. The faculty just flat out didn’t like him, and wanted to get him out.
There is ample evidence to suggest neurological sex differences. That the legion of “social scientists” have adduced a mountain of evidence supporting discrimination as a predicate for sex disparity vis-a-vis the hard sciences is not particularly surprising. That hypotheses to the contrary do not get much play is also unsurprising. Perhaps the least surprising is that Summers’ arguments were met, not with dialogue, but political power. Locke weeps.
But does this evidence explain different aptitudes for science? Or just that there are neuroloical differences?
Hmm, let’s see: The brain is the widely accepted locus of cognition. There are anecdotally observed and putative examples of cognitive sex differences. One must have all the intellectual curiosity of, well, a tendentious true-believer to dismiss such an apparently intuitive congruence. Does our current knowledge of neurological gender asymmetry evince a causative connection with disparity in the hard sciences? No – because frankly, we don’t know enough (and they don’t militate against such a causative connection either). This much is clear: we’re not likely to obtain any greater knowledge in this regard so long as those of our institutions whose mission is to pursue such knowledge excommunicate the heretics with the temerity to even pose a hypothesis.
The brain does lots of complicated things. To know that neurological differences cause differences in science aptitude means we know how science aptitude works. And we must know that these neurological differences are part of that. All that we know is that there are some (how big? how significant?) differences in brains, and maybe in science aptitudes.
Just because its the brain and the brain is about thinking and science is about thinking isn’t enough. And saying ‘congruence’ doesn’t make it so. Its ok to dismiss your causal link between neurological differences and ‘anecdotally observed and putative examples of cognitive sex differences’ despite your proclamation of ‘congruence.’
Summers wasn’t working on this stuff. He was making idiotic leaps like you.
“We’re not likely to obtain any greater knowledge in this regard so long as those of our institutions whose mission is to pursue such knowledge excommunicate the heretics with the temerity to even pose a hypothesis.”
But no one is being excommunicated for this. Steven Pinker, for example, has done lots of research on innate abilities in humans, and has recently delved into the question of whether there are innate differences in the sexes that cause gender differences. Is he being “excommunicated” for posing these hypotheses? No. He is debating his position in an open academic forum, without persecution.
Summers comments were criticized because there was no evidence to back them up, and the President of Harvard shouldn’t be doing this.
Unfortunately, the pundits have treated this as stifling of dissent or the leftist academy gone wild or political correctness gone amok. But that isn’t the issue. To quote an excellent post on the topic at (Pharyngula):
actus:
Granted for the sake of argument.
If a difference causes a difference in a feature, we know how that feature works? This doesn’t follow at all.
You restate your premise to prove your point. Is this an example of a neurological difference?
OK, this does not follow from neurological differences causing difference to indicate science aptitude. It’s not a conclusion; it’s an observation. And it sounds a lot like Summers said, sans gender.
Why not? And besides, science isn’t all about thinking; thinking is a tool in the science toolbox. Science is about the systematic study of the world around us. Sometimes we are blessed with genius who makes a leap forward. Sometimes the button sorters win out.
The same could be said about ”And we must know that these neurological differences are part of that. ”
Since you have jumped back and forth in your illogical discourse, it’s OK for us to dismiss your conclusion here. Especially since it’s clearly a proclamation based on your personal opinion, and doesn’t follow from your previous psychobabble.
Pot, meet kettle.
TW: Damn straight.
My opinion is that we don’t know what makes up innate aptitude. And thus we can’t know that the neurological differences we’ve observed are the causes of ‘anecdotal’ differences in innate aptitude.
All we can do is say that that men and women have slightly different brains. But its a big leap from that to saying that this slight difference is what explains innate aptitude differences.
actus, llama school.
Missing the point, per usual.
Question: Noam Chomsky writes moronic BS, so did that Ward Churchill cat. Do you support evicting them from their leadership positions at their universities? If not, you’re hypocrites. QED.
Not the point. The question here is not, I repeat NOT about whether women are biologically (taken as a statistical whole!) less suited to certain tasks than others (and men likewise, of course). Of course this is a subject for debate–that is, it *should have been* a subject for debate, before the so-called ‘scientific community’ at Harvard pre-emptively shut the debate down.
When Summers brought up the possibility that differences in science/math aptitudes might have some physiological rather than social explanation, he was not easily dismissed as irrational but hysterically condemned out of hand as a blasphemer and a heretic. It should not be possible to excommunicate a person from the scientific community (though in essence this is exactly what happened)–if what Summers said was really so obviously disprovable, then let his views (or his conjectures) be disproven by men and women of science! But now the very *question* has been ruled unacceptable in polite company–not because the answer is so obvious one way or another, but rather because it was quietly decided (at least among an influential few, apparently) that now was not a politically good time to raise the question; that our society is not yet “mature” enough to handle this debate.
Now, I’m not about to argue that certain reprehensible ideologies have not, in the past, used distortions of science to support unspeakable things–but in this case, I have to say, the modern Western academy of all places is hardly a hotbed of knuckle-dragging misogynists–these are surely some of the last people in the world who would want to find a real correlation between sex and science and math ability. (Making them, at least potentially, exceptionally well-suited to pursuing this question honestly and rigorously). And because this refusal on the part of qualified academics and scientists to deal fully, openly, and honestly with the question of the biological differences between the sexes is not going to make the argument or the question go away (as we see clearly here)–in the end, it simply cedes the field of debate uncontested to unreason and anarchy.
Wow, btw, this is a perfect example of the catastrophic decline in academia.
Things have been considered and rejected, thus endeth the sermon. Because they just have, man, like yesterday. Don’t you read, like, Sartre and stuff?
I can’t wait until they’ve considered and rejected all of the other important issues in life, like free-will (nope, man, its all like dopamines, dude) and the meaning of life (dude, its to, like, pay taxes for the uber-state perfect utopia, homes: Rock!). And once things have been rejected, nope sorry, the Supreme Ayatollahs of the Social Sciences have issued their recieved wisdom. Case closed.
Because that’s just how the university is SUPPOSED to work.
I would not want to be managed by either of those guys. I’m sure a lot of people think that way. I think that’s why they don’t have management positions.
But he was never in the scientific community. He was managing it. In universities, it looks like they have the luxury of having a say in the hiring and firing of bosses who don’t know much. I know that causes a lot of envy: its certainly a power I’ve wished I’ve had.
But steven pinker will keep on doing his research into sex differences.
Hey! Sartre was an alright guy (I forgive him his Marxism, if only because it was so beautifully incompatible with everything else he believed in). Foucault, on the other hand, was a miserable purulent little bitch. (In my considered opinion, that is. . .
)
Oh, please. The ‘scientific community’ is not part of a caste system; there is no writing in the sky dividing those who are in it from those who are not–the question stands independent of the man who posed it: if it’s unacceptable for one person to ask a certain question, this is because the question itself is unacceptable. And the fact that Steven Pinker has not been hounded out of his job yet does not mean that the Summers case will not naturally make it even harder for Pinker to engage in civil dialogue with his colleagues without being ever more frequently sanctimoniously ruled out of court from the start.
So, you would remove them as heads of their departments? Yes or no? Nevermind, I don’t care, you’ve already struck another pose.
Please, Actus. What is your secret?
Tantra.
BZZZZZT!!
Tantra? I think it is more like a self induced mental illness. You have to reach the next level, grasshopper…
Did I not liberally qualify the term? Does not ‘congruence’ itself denote something more like correspondence than causation?
Anyway, what I was talking about is the creative part of science—the part before the rigor; the creative stuff. As you say, Summers wasn’t working on this stuff. He wasn’t making policy either. He was making with the elocution, the way in which an ephebic dissident blog-commentarian might make with the acerbic.
Rarrrr. [retractable claws poke out]
Is there anyone on the Left that still, you know, has their balls? I can think maybe Stalin, but he mostly just killed his own serfs, or Mao, maybe. Clearly most of today’s Left is so primly feminine that they could hardly pick up a baton to lead the marching band before running off to make love with their faces.
TW: proletariat, because leftists include the proles in everything, including their revolutionary ‘chic’ genocides.
“miserable purulent little bitch” is a purely technical term, you understand. . .
If they were my bosses, I would want them to not be my bosses. If they were the heads of my department, I would want them to not be. To me anyone with Churchill’s disdain for pacifism seems way to caustic to get along with others. But the people who actually work with him may think different. I’d leave it up to them if they want him as their leader.
There is management and bosses. And there is asking a question in an academic research and there is ranking the importance of various effects based on not much at all.
He was the president. With a big say in hiring and personell policy. The kind that affects how many women are in high positions in science.
Wait, is this comments section creationist/ID’ers? Please say no.
actus:
Called, Off Thread. Stay on subject.
Meanwhile, back in reality…….
Ummmm…..hellllloooooo! Knock, knock! The question concerned “leadership” positions, not “management”. Management means they would have been hired to management. Chomsky and Churchill are “academics”, which is to management as cowboys are to sheep.
But Chomsky and Churchill are in a “leadership by example” position. Their opinions are valued and sought after by people. God knows why, but this is demonstratedly so; if naught else, people buy their books and pay to hear them speak. All of this is a result of their writing and speaking, not their “management”.
Now, the original question was:
Since you morphed the subject into “management”, Vercingetorix’s question if you support evicting them from their “leadership positions” (i.e., jobs) must be answered “Yes”, and you are a hypocrite.
Not that I needed this logical exercise to demonstrate that. But it was fun pointing out your idiocy.
Again.
Verc,
First, Chomsky and Churchill don’t have leadership positions at their universities. They’re hired to teach and do research. I know nothing about Churchill’s research, but Chomsky is the father of modern linguistics and is one of the most influential researchers alive. I don’t support is the eviction of professors from their positions as faculty for having moronic views outside of their field of research, either on the left or the right. (Poor and/or fraudulent scholarship is a different story.)
As for leadership positions, I would not support a President if they demonstrated a lack of scholarly aptitude.
Alex,
You said “that is, it *should have been* a subject for debate, before the so-called ‘scientific community’ at Harvard pre-emptively shut the debate down.” In my earlier post, I linked to a debate between Pinker and Spelke on ”The Science of Gender and Science”, hosted by Harvard. So how is the scientific community shutting debate down on this topic? It’s clear that the people debating this topic (see Steven Pinker) haven’t been excommunicated from the scientific community….this is an open topic for debate and discussion. Summers comments were criticized for the reasons mentioned above, not because the scientific community is excommunicating anyone who desires to discuss this. Your characterization of the scientific community is completely wrong, and is the typical straw man (or, straw community) thrown out in these kinds of discussions.
Has anyone ever noticed that actus is a contrarian dipshit with far more regard for his imagination that for the facts on the ground?
I. for one, am not going to talk to him. I think he likes the attention.
tw: cut, as in the crap.
Actus states:
“My opinion is that we don’t know what makes up innate aptitude.”
But this opinion embraces a comforting taboo that is in fact quite ignorant.
Murray very briefly summarizes these scientific findings, replete with 23 footnotes to the literature in Commentary, September 2005, section II.
Many people are more fond of opinons based on faith than the findings of science. For examppe, I’ve engaged in responses from MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins on this topic (who was among those women offended by Larry Summers at the conference in question) and found her more unresponsive than curious about the science.
“The historical reality of male dominance of the greatest achievements in science and the arts is not open to argument,” observes Charles Murray, who authored “Human Accomplishment” (2003) in order to answer what was known about these facts.
Men dominate in all fields of high-level accomplishment, stretching to full exclusion as the field becomes more completely abstract. Murray speculates that it is the inability of men to bear children that accounts for the fact of men’s almost exclusive dominance over elite accomplishment. Thus, while biology is not destiny (as Freud wrote), it nonetheless has a very large say at the highest (as well as lowest) levels.
This should not be surprising, given what we know about human genetic variability. Women are the human default sex, but men provide the genetic “wild card,” the major source for differences both good and bad. But feminists – who pray to utopian impossibilities instead of practicalities – reject this. The result has been the embrace of taboo, violated only with rare exception and severely so (as this thread demonstrates).
“Elites throughout the West are living a lie, basing the futures of their societies on the assumption that all groups of people are equal in all respects. Lie is a strong word, but justified. It is a lie because so many elite politicians who profess to believe it in public do not believe it in private. It is a lie because so many elite scholars choose to ignore what is already known and choose not to inquire into what they suspect. We enable ourselves to continue to live the lie by establishing a taboo against discussion of group differences.”
Welcome to the taboo of our time, “Actus” and “Llama school. “I do not partake of it because my life experience reinforces what we know empirically. Men and women are innately different. Relatively few of these differences are large (except at the aggregate statistical tails), and none of these differences legitimate political or social exclusion, but they do account for most people’s sex-based life choices, especially parenting and career choices.
Even Europe turns out not to be as utopian as many feminists imagine because the US provides more opportunity for women, according to data compiled by Newsweek
</a><a href=”http://www.ridingsun.com/posts/1140485596.shtml” target=”_blank”>.
Thus, the farce at Harvard so recently played out might be personified by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as “Otto” in the comic masterpiece “A Fish Called Wanda,” whose refrain was “Don’t call me stupid!”
When sister Wanda finally calls him out on his pretentiousness, she bites back witheringly:
“Oh, right, to call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs. I’ve known sheep that could outwit you, but you think you’re an intellectual don’t you, ape?
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes, they do Otto, they just don’t understand it.
And therefore the FAS reads but just doesn’t understand how seriously Larry challenged them in their taboos. Insitutionally, it was a taboo too far. But those open and curious and grasp that “denial is not a reality based option,” although frustrated, understand the cause of this institutional amnesia and intellectual neglect.
It is not a consumation to be wished by the faithful.
-Orson
graduate student, environmental science and policy
Imperial College [ie, UK’s MIT], University of London
Not a good manager. Not a good way to herd cats. Toss him.
All actus is saying is that leftists at Harvard do not want to hear academic discussions. They want to hear people agree with them or they will behave improperly.
And of course, he’s absolutely correct.
Christ, Jeff. Will you either admit you secretly write as actus for the sheer satirical pleasure of it, or if it’s not you, would you please do something about that pathetic stream of effluvium he/she/it/whatever posts? Seriously, it’s getting very tiresome to have what seems like every thread spoiled by this twit.
TW: mass. As in, this crap is close to critical mass.
So basically, he was just saying that men have (relative to women) a flattened and extended distribution curve, with the same mean but with more extremes on both ends? More men are really stupid at math, but at the same time, more men are really smart at math? Sort of the way that a 12-sided die will come up 12 1/12 of the time, but a roll of two six-siders only comes up 12 1 time in 36, even though the 2d6 roll has a higher mean?
Well, no wonder the girls didn’t get it. They don’t play enough D&D.
Someone else brought up the treatment of ID in the academy. I thought it was fine to ask the simple yes/no if y’all are a bunch of creationist and ID loons. Specially while in a discussion about academics and science. Its good to know if this is time being wasted.
If people want to follow them, that’s up to those people. I’m talking about management positions that people have over underlings who, like the rest of us, don’t quite get to pick our bosses. Thats what summers was fired from. That’s what you can fire people from. If you want to fire the role model, don’t emulate them.
But I was talking about the management position that Summers had, which now has morphed into being some sort of a role model—which he never was. You really can’t evict from “leadership by example,” unless each person that is supposedly following the example stops. Thats up to those people, not me, to evict them. I have no idea who takes Churchill as a role model. I’d imagine some linguists want to make a contribution as big as generative grammar. I’ve met some academics, and none want to follow in the footsteps of those two guys.
Ya that’s Larrry, gender researcher!
But clearly, you’d want to be managed.
actus, in addition to all the other evidences of BPD or whatever that you exhibit daily, and in addition to the ample evidence you really are into getting your teeth bashed in on a regular basis, I’m beginning to realize that you’re also into bondage. Mental, organizational, probably physical. I think you post from mom’s basement all day and go out at nite to gay biker bars.
Jeff, if that’s you, you are so damn good it really is scary…
Not really. I’m lucky enough to have found a job where I won’t really have much of a boss. As you can imagine I don’t work well under them.
I come here for the love. Really. But It would just break my heart to find out you’re all a bunch of ID/Creationist loons. Please tell me its not true.
Yes, men and women are innately different. No one is arguing otherwise. And lots of scientists do research on these differences, as seen by the slew of studies cited in the Pinker and Spelke debate. If this was such a taboo subject, where would all this research be coming from?
Some of these differences may be accounted for slight innate differences that lead to males choosing different careers. This is a point up for debate, but it’s not (for the most part) what Summers was criticized for. He was criticized for combination of his 2nd and 3rd point, noting that there are differences in the high end in the availability of aptitude for women versus men (a claim w/no evidence) and then saying that this was a more important factor in the gender differences in science than discrimination.
Again, Summers wasn’t criticized for addressing a taboo topic. Evidence from a variety of studies show that gender differences in innate aptitude are a topic of debate and research. Again, there is NO TABOO on researching innate gender differences. He was criticized for saying something stupid w/o evidence to back it up. Same thing with some of Charles Murray’s work (e.g. the Bell Curve). His work isn’t criticized for attacking taboo subjects…it’s criticized because the science behind it is crap. Unfortunately, those that aren’t aware of this believe that both Summers and Murray were criticized for attacking sacred cows…but that isn’t the case.
I know. That’s the entire point, actus.
Oh, brother, the absolute balls of that statement…on actus’ chin.
Oh? Well, that’s a load off of my mind.
Gee, Llama school wins. Can’t. argue. with. that.
I guess I’m going to roll over here and have a Marlboro. Ahhh, yeah. Because they are completely safe, as who would know better than the good people over a Philip-Morris?
Give.Me.A.Break.
Oh, yes, the unassailable debate where the female professor positively swooned. Again, a dramatic riposte as I could ever hope these mortal eyes might see from the Ivory Olympian. But no dice there…unless you want to argue the relative merits of transgender studies in a neo-imperialistic dogma. The academy is positively full of crap, in more ways than one on this issue.
None for me thanks, I leave creationism to the religious and ID to the socialists.
Not exactly on topic, but further evidence of Harvard lunacy.
The intriguing aspect of this is that “the science behind it is crap” when the ‘it’ is about the most cherished notions of the Left, ie. the (demonstrated lack of) near-absolute equality of people’s brains and personalities at birth. Lip service is paid to differences – and research into them – as long as there’s no effect of such research on policy; once such reseach results attempt to explain any amount of the disparities in achievement between the races or the sexes, the research and/or its results magically becomes crap.
That’s a stupid Dean.
And on goes the thread. Yes, lets. Let’s talk about the actus program.
Your absence is conspicuous here, actus-program.
Code rot?
tw: Ten thousand bytes.
Hardly. Scientists, academics, thinkers of all kinds do plenty of speculating on the conclusions they believe they may eventually come to, the advances in technology which they expect eventually to achieve. Summers was indulging in a bit of speculation, yes–but speculation no less than the idea that all gender inequities *must* be the result of discrimination of some kind or other (which is about unprovable even if you are honest enough to care to find out if it’s true or not). He would never have gotten two in the hat from the academic establishment for saying something stupid like–oh, I don’t know–citing those ‘feminist’ ‘scholars’ who like to claim that one in every three women has been raped (any actual statistics? Aw, fuck ‘em. Just take our word for it–because it’s all in a good cause.) Why? Well, simple–it’s a much more ridiculous thing to say (Is the idea that, in the most self-consciously progressive circles of modern society, actual discrimination might not be *the* major factor in gender inequities any more, seriously on par with *creationism* for unbelievability?!) but it suits the purposes and the pieties of the academic establishment. And the more fixed and rigid in their orthodoxy that these become, they in turn *do* affect and constrain the actual researchers like Steven Pinker, who really are *not* regarded with civil equanimity by their colleagues as it is.
I didn’t see that many movies this year. Saw Walk the Line this weekend. While I found the acting and the music quite impressive, the movie put me to sleep.
According to the National Institutes for Mental health, its 1 in 4 that are victims of sexual assault.
Yes, the kidz call that ‘forming a hypothesis.’ The usual sequence is to form a hypothesis, then test, but on occassion, pay attention to this llama and actus, you will see this again, we have the technology to actually form hypotheses from data which we have.
Last word, then I close the book on this. Maybe, just maybe, the evidence that he cited, you know THE DEARTH OF HIGH LEVEL [XX] TALENT IN THE HARD SCIENCES, maybe, just fucking maybe counts as evidence? You know, for a hypothesis. But whatever, put both of your heads together and come up with something witty before you post again.
I declare a comment embargo on actus (which is an act of war by the way, because I’m an evil war monger).
Nah, actus is kinda cool. Is actus the new PIATOR?
Go ahead, I’m just talking about taking MY toys and going home. Play with the big stinky-head, and all of his man-boy-luv cooties.
Go ahead, I’m just talking about taking MY toys and going home. Play with the big stinky-head, and all of his man-boy-luv cooties.
So speculation on subject matter where there is a lack of established knowledge or clear evidence is now considered “saying something stupid” and has no place in institutes of higher learning?
Andras,
So you have evidence that “once such reseach results attempt to explain any amount of the disparities in achievement between the races or the sexes, the research and/or its results magically becomes crap?” Provide some.
Alex,
So you have evidence that the leftist orthodoxy in academia have “affect(ed) and constrain(ed) the actual researchers like Steven Pinker” or that Pinker is “*not* regarded with civil equanimity by their colleagues”? Steven Pinker is well-respected and is considered one of the top scientists in his field, even though many do disagree with some of his work.
Verc,
So you’re claiming that “THE DEARTH OF HIGH LEVEL [XX] TALENT IN THE HARD SCIENCES, maybe, just fucking maybe counts as evidence” for innate differences in aptitude between men and women? Because if so, you really don’t understand anything about what constitutes evidence for a claim.
It’s all about the evidence, people. It’s easy to claim that academia is filled with PC ran amok, where new ideas are stifled everywhere, where heretics are excommunicated for attacking sacred cows, where research that doesn’t fit PC stereotypes is excoriated simply for that, etc. etc. Well, here’s your opportunity to go past unsubstantiated claims and provide evidence to back these statements up.
So, what have we established?
Actus has a set of established beliefs, dictated by authority, that if you question them you are a “loon.” And it calls that “science.”
Millions of people are violently offended by the amazing discovery that there are different aptitude bell curves for males an females of the human species. This is a principle I discovered 20 years ago in jr. high school, as follows:
Special Ed: Mostly Boys
Gifted and Talented: Mostly Boys
Everyone Else: Slightly More Girls Than Boys
Scientifically proven? No. But I was able to find research studies in the library as a pimply 14-year-old brat that show the same thing, and have evidently fallen down the memory hole because this is still a “fresh area for study.”
WTFever, people. Summers handed these ninnies an intellectual challenge and they went after him with pitchforks and torches. And now Harvard will slip back into the Academic Welfare State it was rapidly becoming.
TW: use, what you do with tools.
Although much of the discussion here focuses on the entire gender issue, let’s not forget that Summers crossed a number of Harvard’s left-wing constituencies: the ROTC recognition, the divestment petition, etc. Personally, I’m inclined to wonder if academia is the best place for Summers. He’s too serius a thinker.
Somehow I’m wondering if Karl Rove is thinking about him for Furgeson’s job….
No, I’m not claiming that exactly. But it sure does NOT contradict the theory either. It in fact does support it. And its not like saying gravity repulses mass or some such.
Fact is, you don’t know why women are represented so little in the academy (in those places), so drop the sophistry. Point in fact, you argued above about innate differences between the sexes. There is quite a bit more evidence to support this view than some PC lollipop-lane garbage.
The dearth of high level talent in the hard sciences is not evidence that there are innate differences in aptitude between the sexes. It doesn’t disprove that hypothesis, but it can’t be taken as evidence for that hypothesis IF it can be explained some other way. If the lack of women in the hard sciences is accounted for by non-innate factors (socialization, discrimination, etc.) then this is not evidence that it’s innate. It’s only evidence IF you can show that other non-innate factors are not contributing to this differences. For example, if African-Americans score poorer on standardized tests than Asians, is that evidence that African-Americans have less innate aptitude than Asians? No…it’s only evidence if you prove that these differences hold accounting for all non-innate factors.
And yes, I don’t know why women are represented less in academia, though I’ve never claimed that. What I’ve stated is that claims that these differences are due to innate differences in aptitude have little/no evidence to support it, and there is definitely more evidence that the gender gap in the sciences is more due to discrimination.
Llama School,
the evidence is your (quoted) post.
So this is where the creationism discussion gets you. Awright. Because its my ‘belief’ from ‘authority’ that i’ve called ‘science’. Great stuff guys.
thanx Llama, but I don’t need you to prove my own point.
You state he speculated on a subject that is contested. You state that nobody knows the truth in that particular subject, therefore he cannot be proven wrong. And you restate the truth of his premise, that innate sex differences do exist.
I could care less whether the idea is true or not—I care more that your line of reasoning is crap. His view is valid, as valid as (and this is overly generous to Harvard’s Womyn Studies Professors) than the orthodoxy of (discrimination, socialization) of the Cult of the Closed Mind.
Great—it wasn’t me, it was the one-armed man. Uh-huh.
Opponents of the notion of innate difference may be able to clue me in on something here. There are fairly simple statistical tests that would bear out discrimination rather than gender as the appropriate explanatory variable for explaining the disparity of men and women in math and the hard sciences. Is the problem that you can’t find a reasonable proxy variable for discrimination? It seems opponents of the idea of innate difference seem to have been hunting for this “philosopher’s stone” variable for the last 20 – 30 years to no avail. Why isn’t this just cherry picking?
Llama School replies to my earlier post:
(I ) Yes, men and women are innately different. No one is arguing otherwise.
…
(II) Again, Summers wasn’t criticized for addressing a taboo topic…. He was criticized for saying something stupid w/o evidence to back it up.
(III) Same thing with some of Charles Murray’s work (e.g. the Bell Curve). His work isn’t criticized for attacking taboo subjects…it’s criticized because the science behind it is crap.
Let me answer these three assertions in turn.
But to set up my compelling response, consider the facts within academe: you may agree with me that there are innate differences between the sexes, but the ruling academics in social science and the humanities do truely not (I a-c)!
Various concerned feminists have tried to get women’s studies to take the facts of human biology seriously and failed (I a). In fact, like Larry Summers, they’ve mostly been treated as heretics. Who do I have in mind? Daphne Patai, then at Indiana University, whose “Professing Feminism” is subtitled in its last edition (2003) “Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies” – real truth in advertising; likewise her sequel “Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and The Future of Feminism,” explaining why her “straight” and married identity became a lightening rod to feminazis, enforing a politically correct antipatriarchal anti-hetrosexualism within academe. Another is Elizabeth Fox-Genovese whose memoir cum academic expose is “Feminism is Not The story of My Life,” explaining how it was not possible to diversify the women’s studies courses she taught because of the rigid, Stalinism of the feild.
Perhaps best known exposers of PC feminazi orthodoxy are Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Summers, especially the latter’s “Who Stole Feminism?” Paglia in particular has pleaded for feminists and literture to engage with the mushrooming facts of relevant biology contradicting the utopian institance that gender is entirely a function of socialization.
Now, consider my personal esperience of the substance of biology within feminism and scholarship (I b). In the early or mid 1970s, anthopologist D. Z. Young published the magisterial “An Intoduction to The Study of Mankind.” It included an illuminating graph charting testosterone and libido against age. For men, both peak around 18-19, while for women both peak in the early 30s before slwly declining.
Now, shift to my college course in human sexuality in the late 80s. Although we used the then most popular textbook, there was no mention of the salient facts above. My instrutor earned her PhD in women’s studies at UC-Berkeley. Did she correct the omission. No, she was similarly silent about the subject. To me, the field under study was going backward in terms of honest scholarship.
So, why were basic, fundamental facts about human psychoneuroendocrinology unwelcome to a purportedly interdisciplinary humanistic subject like women’s studies and human health (the cross-listing for human sexuality courses at my university)? Because this naturalistic paradigm clashed with the PC social determinism of “gender” – and gender studies of feminism trumps all other considerations.
Why is that? Becauce of the convenient coincidence of science fraud and medical careerism, trendy psychological behaviorism of the 1950s-70s, and the new utopianism of feminism with its paradigm og gender socialization (I a-above), which Larry Summers questioned with adroitness.
The chief culprit whose phony work underwrote feminism’s climb to widespread respectability is Johns Hopkins University pschologist and sexologist John Money, whose claim to have successfully “re-assigned” the sexes of twins was finally unmasked by Milton Diamond in 1997. Money believed gender identity was easily maleable. But in fact it was not and Money knew his twins experiments had failed, yet even after he was exposed as a fraud, he said “It’s part of the anti-feminist movement.” In 2000, journalist John Colapinto’s
“As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl,” revealed Money to be a charlatan, tireless self-promoter, and intellectual fraud. By 2004, his subject “Brenda”/David whose “sex-reassignment” had failed, committed suicide at age 38 – only one statistical death for the many millions of the “well-educated” who have been deluded into believing the fashionable nonsense of gender socialization underpinning the academic study of feminism, women’s studies, and progessive idealism about sex equality everywhere.
Now from the above (I a-c) we see the collapse of an insitutionally protected and politically correct orthodoxy. This unmasking is what is at issue here – who’s attempted to do so? And who resists facing uncomfortable facts?
(II) In early 2005, Harvard University President and economist Larry Summers was specifically asked to address a conference and entertain researchable solutions explaining women’s disparate representation in science and math. (Full disclosure: I have a special interest in this subject because most of the females in my high school peer group ended up in science – one now an astrophysicist at Carlton College in Minnesota. For example, my HS debate partner and college roommate is a neuroscientist at a major university, whose wife is also a PhD in the same field; my other college roommate taught stats at MIT for four years, and his wife edits math books and teaches HS science. To say that I have no personal connection to the subject here would be a lie.) That the audience didn’t like his ideas says much more about their closed minds than his.
Sir Karl Popper, often called the 20th century’s greatest philosopher of science, famously argued that science advances through a few bold conjectures and their attempted refutations. Larry offered a few conjectures and they were largely dismissed. In fact these tentative proposals, in Charles Murray’s words in Commentary (“Inequality Taboo,” Sept 2005), were rather “mild.” Summers was not attacked not for saying “something stupid” or without evidence. He was attacked for sensibly challenging the institutionalized sacred cow described above (I a-c), but equally one that also has been convincingly falsified. New ideas are needed, but will they be heard? There’s no guarentee of that.
Similarly, (III) Charles Murray and the late Richard Hernstein (sp?) and their book “The Bell Curve” were certainly widely reviled for their efforts. But were these dismissals sound? If repeatability is a fundamental achievement of science and serious sign of progress in knowledge, probably not. Their thesis was really about the rise of meritocracy in America. Black and white differences made up only a tiny portion of the weighty tome.
Nevertheless, writing in the Wall Street Journal last October 12th, Murray writes: “There is no technical dispute on some of the core issues. In the aftermath of ‘The Bell Curve,’ the American Psychological Association established a task force on intelligence whose report was published in early 1996. The task force reached the same conclusions as ‘The Bell Curve’ on the size and meaningfulness of the black-white difference.”
<a href=”http:////www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007391″ target=”_blank”>
We have a weakness for dismissing uncomfortable facts about ourselves, as human beings. Therefore, forgive me if I find “Llama school’s” assertions above more than merely weak – but quite possibly specious.
Verc,
I’ll repeat this. Summers wasn’t criticized for saying that there are innate differences between men and women. That’s obvious. Women innately develop breasts, whereas men (for the most part) do not. Men, for the most part, have more of certain hormones and less of others when compared to women. Etc, etc. What Summers is being criticized for is asserting that there are innate differences in aptitude that lead to the gender gap in the sciences, and this is a larger factor in the gender gap than forms of discrimination. He has no evidence to back up this claim. You may not get this (since you’ve shown repeatedly in this post that you don’t understand what is or is not evidence in support of a claim), and for that I’m sorry.
Orson,
Thanks for the reply. I really can’t speak to (Ia), since I don’t know anything about innateness and women’s studies. I know that this is being clearly addressed in experimental psychology (see the Pinker and Spelke debate I linked to earlier in the comments), and there isn’t some heterodoxy there.
As to (1b), were instructors denying that there was a physiological differences in libido? Did they have studies that provided counter-evidence? It’s important to note that just because the textbook didn’t mention this doesn’t mean that the textbook authors were hiding this information.
As to (1c), Money is a joke, and I would hope to think that there aren’t people that still take his findings seriously.
Anyways, these three points don’t lead to “the collapse of an insitutionally protected and politically correct orthodoxy.” There were extreme theories that all differences between the sexes were caused by the environment, and they were shown to be wrong. These theories didn’t dominate the field, and there is serious study being done to see what is innate and what is environmental.
As for point (2), you are misunderstanding why Summers was criticized. And I will AGAIN repeat why that is: he was criticized for stating that innate differences between men and women is a larger factor in the gender gap in the sciences than discrimination. And this is a comment that he has no evidence for. If you’re the head of a university, you shouldn’t be saying things without evidence to back it up. It might work in the blogosphere, but it shouldn’t work in academia.
And with (III), the Bell Curve has been criticized time and time again for it’s poor scholarship. I don’t have the time to find all the links, but if you take some time to look you’ll see that the book was criticized for failures in methodology and central assumptions, not because he’s attacking some sort of sacred cow.
This has nothing to do with humans having a “weakness for dismissing uncomfortable facts”. It has to do with evidence. Summers didn’t have evidence to support his assertions, and he was criticized for that. The Bell Curve is a poor work of scholarship, and it was criticized for that. These “uncomfortable facts” are being rejected because they’re not facts, they’re unsubstantiated conjecture.