Harvard's Summers' Parting CNN Interview

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2006-07-04 00:50

Text here. Relevant excerpt:

AP: You have apologized for your controversial remarks that innate ability may partly explain why fewer women reach top-level science jobs, but you also said any idea should be on the table as a university. How do you reconcile that?

Summers: As president I bear responsibility for the signal that my remarks send, and the signal that was sent by those remarks was anything but what I intended or what I believe. And so I have taken responsibility for that. At the same time, no subject should be off limits for academic research in a university, and at a time when 30 percent more women are graduating from college than men, I think we ignore the whole topic of gender differences in learning styles very much at our peril.

In the meantime while that research is being done I think the right agenda is pretty clear: it's to turn heat into light. ... We've done that with a variety of changes in our parental leave policies, or changes in the ways in which we provide research support and mentoring, and I think that's something quite constructive that has come out of the furor.

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"At the same time, no subject should be off limits for academic research in a university"

I agree wholeheartedly with Summers on this point. College is supposed to be an institution where people can freely and safely argue opposing points-of-view. In reality, opinions that do not fit the politically correct world view are discouraged. When politically incorrect statements (no matter how accurate) are made by a university president, they can stir up enough resentment to force him into resigning. If he can't speak the unspeakable, who can!? College has narrowed its focus to programming people along strict political lines; feminist think that is! Feminist think is not only evident in the policies and politics of the university, it exerts its influence in more subtle ways; textbooks selected for instruction for example. I know this because I just graduated receiving a bachelor degree with honors. Before entering college, I had a high regard for higher institutions of learning. My experience in college, the stifling effects of political correctness in particular, has served to lower it.

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Submitted by bull on Tue, 2006-07-04 02:48

I think of Summers and Hopkins, I think of Harrison Bergeron. Nancy, of course, would be the 'handicapper general'.

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Submitted by brotherskeeper on Tue, 2006-07-04 02:55

Larry Summers in his remarks as quoted sums up pretty accurately his record in five turbulent years at Harvard. He's being very gentlemanly and reserved in his statements about his lynching by the feminazis, not wanting to burn his bridges at the U. with a comfy teaching post awaiting him.

People who haven't worked in higher academia may view a university president's role as a lofty, powerful position. But in fact you could not imagine a more compromised CEO with more masters, bosses, and tenured unfireable "employees" than s/he can ever hope to please.

One lasting legacy of Summer's very public demise was the widespread media exposure of feminism's INtolerance. From the exemplars of so-called "diversity" we got swooning outrage, straw-man bullying, and opportunistic hysteria ....i.e. the usual N.O.W.-style integrity and reasonableness.

Feminism has never valued diversity of any kind, especially of the philosophical variety. Which makes one ponder why feminists have been more successful in taking over education than any other field?

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Submitted by Roy on Tue, 2006-07-04 14:09