A Big Day for Larry Summers
Oodles of Summers news and references in today's wrap-up. So let's get down to it, shall we?
1) Here's a piece called "
I Am Woman, Hear Me Discourse Quietly," from the New Haven Advocate (for you Cambridge folks, that's the Phoenix of New Haven).
Key quote: "The media love a war, gendered or otherwise. But what interests me most about such discussions is not whether Larry Summers or [New York Times columnist] John Tierney is a sexist; I doubt that either man is, and I enjoy their provocative musings, which none of us should be afraid of. No, what gets my testosterone boiling—macho man that I am—is that no amount of writing about female physicists or Indy drivers ever leads to meaningful family leave reform."
2) The Denver Post cites Summers and the $50 million diversity package in a story titled, "
Lack of Female Profs a Stubborn Statistic."
Key quote: "Women, even after years of training, continue to leave universities for reasons ranging from personal choices to institutional bias. The result is that men continue to dominate faculties, with the numbers most striking in science and engineering departments."
3) Meanwhile, the Crimson has
news of a potential $115 million gift to the Harvard School of Public Health from the Ellison Foundation, started by Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The money would go to establish a research center for global health.
If the gift goes through, Summers will certainly associate himself with it—deservedly, for all I know—and it would help to vindicate Summers' emphasis upon pursuing eight- and nine-figure grants from, in today's parlance, "high net-worth individuals." Perhaps Summers is waiting until Commencement to unveil it? That would certainly change the topic from women in science.
