The Gaffe that Won't Go Away According to the Daily Princetonian, Larry Summers is in hot water again....

The contention revolves around a speech Summers gave this week to the Organization for Surgery, Health, Infection and Treatment, in which he suggested that women may be "intrinsically better" than men at giving birth.

It's part of the newspaper's annual joke issue.

I am constantly amazed at how deep the memory of Summers' women-in-science gaffe runs. Almost invariably, when I tell new acquaintances that I wrote a book about Harvard and its former president, they say something like, "Oh, the one who thinks that women are stupid?". Or: "The one who thinks that women should stay home?".

Summers' remark on women-in-science has over time morphed into a much broader indictment of his views on women generally. It's now an avatar for general condemnations of sexism. Just listen to Martha Schwartz, the design school prof at Harvard who alleges discrimination in her department.

"The sexism is entrenched," Schwartz said. "What conclusions can you draw? The Larry Summers one would be that maybe women are not predispositioned to be landscape architects."

Fairly or not, Summers' women-in-science moment has become one of the defining episodes—maybe the defining episode—of his career.
  ¶ 8:36 AM