Women in Science: We Want Them
According to the New York Times, "women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and 'outmoded institutional structures' in academia, an expert panel reported today."
The expert panel, part of the National Academy of Sciences, produced this report: "
Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." (You can skim it, or pay $68—ouch!—for the whole thing.)
Here is its first finding: "Women have the ability and drive to succeed in science and engineering. Studies of brain structure and function, or hormonal modulation of performance, or human cognitive development, and of human evolution have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and scientific leadership positions in these fields."
In other words, take that, Larry Summers.
Or, as the Times puts it, "The panel dismissed the idea, notably advanced last year by
Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of
Harvard, that the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science might be the result of 'innate' intellectual deficiencies, particularly in mathematics."
The Times reports that "a spokesman for Mr. Summers said he was out of the country and could not be reached for comment."
We know the first part of that sentence is true. Since Summers commented via Blackberry to today's Crimson on the news that he is writing a column for the FT, we know the second part is not true.
President Summers is now imitating one of his mentors, Henry Kissinger, who frequently uses the out-of-the-country excuse,
as Slate's Jack Shafer has pointed out.
I would expect this panel to generate some controversy. Its members included Donna Shalala, who knew Summers from the Clinton days; Elizabeth Spelke, who loudly disagreed with Summers after 1/14; and Ruth Simmons, who would be politically disinclined to agree with Summers on this issue. The Times points out that the 18-member panel had just one male member. As it were.
This would be a good moment for Steve Pinker to weigh in on the new academic blog, Open University. (Or Summers himself, for that matter.)
But no...just one post today.
It's by someone named Eric Rauchway. Here.
You can read it.
It seems that our theological disputations of last week have rested with Jacob Levy letting himself get rolled by Brad DeLong because Brad quoted some hippie theology at him and, in passing, called the Protestant God evil. I don't normally like to get all Leviticusly Deuteronomous on people, but this seems like a good place to mount a defense of the old-time religion....
I don't like to get all Leviticusly Deuteronomous on people either. But sometimes, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
