On the One Hand...
Former Clintonite Gene Sperling defends his old friend Larry Summers in this
column. Sperling denies that Summers is sexist and points to a number of pro-woman policy proposals Summers has supported.
Sperling has a point: Summers has taken concrete steps to implement socially progressive policy measures over the years, and some of those measures have a significantly larger impact on women than on men.
But Sperling's column inadvertently points up why Summers is such a complicated and divisive figure: for every piece of evidence you can marshal suggesting that he believes
x, you can find another fact suggesting he believes
y. If you look at the number of women he's appointed to the highest levels in his academic administration, or the number of women who have won tenure at Harvard since he's become president, or the way he's talked to certain women at Harvard, you might very well conclude that Summers has a sexism problem.
Summers does contradict himself, and his inconsistency is one reason why people argue about him so heatedly, and for so long. Whatever the issue with Summers, both sides will always have material to back up the way they're already inclined to feel.
