Shots in the Dark

Stephen W. Stromberg does a year-end wrap-up in his column today.

Stromberg discusses a political science class he’s finishing that discusses transitions from feudalism to absolutism, and remarks, “The logic of absolutist state-building basically came down to this: put one guy in charge and generate a hierarchy of technocrats, each with his or her own specialized turf, below the leader. That’s basically what has been happening at Harvard over the last four years.”

He also goes on to chastise Harvard students for complaining too much and faults the curricular review as vague and vision-less.

Quite an interesting column, actually, and more constructive than I’m making it sound.

Rocky Mountain News columnist Vincent Carroll isn’t too happy about Larry Summers’ decision to spend $50 million on diversity, as he writes in this colum item, “As usual, make the students pay.”

Key graf: “It’s bad enough that Harvard President Lawrence Summers has spent most of this year backtracking and groveling, by turns, for musing about whether innate aptitude explains in part the ratio of men and women in math and science careers. Now he has embraced reforms that include punishing students who had nothing to do with his remarks and who might not agree with them.”

Carroll particularly doesn’t like the fact that graduate students in science will be compelled to undergo “sensitivity training” in gender bias.

“If the training is anything like the diversity programs favored by corporate America, it will be condescending and simple-minded, while ruled by the assumption that every participant is a closet Neanderthal.”

All of this—the original controversy, the $50 million, the diversity provost, the sensitivity training, everything—is so unnecessary.

What Harvard simply needs is a president who consistently and strongly sends the message that diversity at every level of the university is essential—a “role model,” if you will.

Larry Summers, who involves himself in the smallest details of university life in so many other areas, never played any role in this issue until his own ass was in a sling. Why?

I’m still waiting for Summers to hire a high-level woman or minority in his academic administration. How can anyone take Mass Hall seriously on the diversity issue when it has all the ethnic and gender diversity of the Porcellian?

Sadly, the first person Summers will hire to diversify his administration will inevitably be…yes…the diversity provost.

I’ve written elsewhere about the paucity of women on newspaper op-ed pages, and God knows I’ve written (probably way too much) here about the women in sciences issue.

But these gender deficits keep cropping up. Now the Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study showing that women are dramatically under-represented as sources in journalism.

So women are under-represented in academia…business…journalism. The list goes on. It occurs to me that if women could unite across these fields to raise the issues these gender deficits have in common, there could be a real movement here—a second wave of feminism.

(Or has there already been a second wave? Maybe a third wave? Where’s Naomi Wolf when you need her?)

The paper that Tierney refers to, “Do Women Shy Away from Competition,” is actually quite interesting, if you have time to read it. (Go to the link in the item below and scroll to the end of Tierney’s column, where you can download the paper as a PDF.)

If you can’t read it, here’s one conclusion from the authors, economists Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund.

“The present paper is part of a research area that tries to understand why women are underrepresented in many high profile jobs and in whole professions,” the authors write. “For example, women have a higher attrition rate from science and engineering, and it increases with academic rank.

“Standard explanations include different preferences (or household or biological constraints) of women in terms of time to be invested in a job. An explanation for the lack of women in science and engineering is also possible differences in ability. An alternative explanation is discrimination, namely that the glass ceiling effect is man made, such that women may not be equally promoted and nurtured in science and engineering.

“We studied an additional explanation, namely that women may be less “competitive,” less prone to select into competitions, but not because of differences in preferences over time invested in jobs, or differences in raw ability of performing in a task. “

“…There is indeed evidence that, for example, the decision of women to quit sciences and engineering is not primarily due to ability. …It seems therefore that decisions of women to remain in male-dominated areas are not driven by actual ability only. In natural settings issues such as the amount of time devoted to the profession, and the desire of women to raise children may provide some explanations for the choices of women.

“In this paper we examined an environment where women and men perform equally well, and where issues of discrimination, or time spent on the job do not have any explanatory power. Nonetheless we find large gender differences in the propensity to choose competitive environments. We feel that the effects we discover in the lab are strong and puzzling enough to call for a greater attention of standard economics to explanations of gender differences that so far have mostly been left in the hands of psychologists and sociologists.”

In other words, we don’t know the answers, but they don’t seem to have anything to do with innate differences in aptitude…and we certainly don’t trust certain psychologists and sociologists (you know who you are, SP) to answer these questions.

Like a certain university president, New York Times columnist John Tierney has decided that he knows “what women want,” as the title of his column today puts it.

Tierney wants to know whether, if you could eliminate all the social factors in the workplace and evaluate men and women based solely on merit, would women make as much as men?

For insight, he turns to a social science experiment that seems interesting but hardly definitive. (It’s a little byzantine to explain here; if you’re interested, go to the link.) The test aspired to determine each gender’s appetite for competition.

The researchers’ conclusion? “Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much,” Professor Niederle said.

Here’s where Tierney gets into trouble, to my mind: “You can argue that this difference is due to social influences,” Tierney says, “although I suspect it’s largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone.”

So far as I know, Tierney has no particular expertise in the field of biology, sociology, genetics, sociobiology, or any other field that might allow him to pronounce on why men seem more competitive in one experiment than women are.

So why does he jump to the conclusion that this apparent difference between the genders is genetically based?

Because, I think, the vogue of sociobiology in recent years has given people who like to dabble in this material just enough information to say dumb things that they think make them sound smart.

Also, it’s just easier for some men to downplay the impact of socializing; genetics is a one-stop answer shop. If you really start to consider the impact of socialization on U.S. socioeconomic structure, the world as we know it starts to look very shaky, and just about everything we thought we could take for granted, we can’t…..

It’s exam time at Harvard. It’s also the end of the fourth year of Larry Summers’ presidency—the moment when, if Summers was the U.S. president, he’d have to stand for reelection.

Of course, Summers doesn’t have to worry about his job security, since the Harvard Corporation seems to have become a subsidiary adjunct of Mass Hall.

But in honor of the covergence of the two timelines, I’ll be posting a Summers’ report card after Memorial Day. (And don’t worry—no grade inflation here!) The president’s report card will grade his progress on several counts, focusing on the goals Summers emphasized when he became president: Allston, boosting the sciences, improving undergraduate education, internationalizing the university.

I’ll also be throwing in a few other areas to be graded, such as: Is Harvard better off than it was four years ago? Has Summers restored the presidency to its pre-Rudenstine role of public intellectual?

And I’d love your help. Everyone can grade the president! Just send an e-mail to [email protected] with your suggestions…..

After two hundred years, Yale has severed its official relationship with the Congregational Church, and yesterday that church held its last Sunday service at Yale’s Battell Chapel.

This is a painful decision for everyone involved, but it seems an inevitable one. At a campus of increasing diversity, how could one denomination claim a monopoly on Yale’s church?

I know that Larry Summers feels the same way about Harvard’s Memorial Church, and that Peter Gomes, the minister at that church, adamantly disagrees. As campus life at Harvard has been quiet the past few weeks, I suggest that President Summers raise this issue at Commencement. Just to be provocative.

Kidding aside, it would be an interesting debate for the campus….

Mass Hall is taking two steps that will increase the level of bureacracy and corporate culture at Harvard.

First, provost Steve Hyman has announced the creation of three new vice-provosts to preside over international affairs, research policy, and diversity. (The latter was first announced last week, of course.) Though Hyman says the jobs will go to faculty members to ensure that there’s a “faculty sensibility” there, they reflect a growing, power-centralizing central administration. For better or worse.

The second development is the announcement of a Harvard-branded credit card. As I wrote in Harvard Rules, Larry Summers has been considering the move for several years now. Lots of other universities do it, as a way to build alumni loyalty while creating an additional revenue stream. Harvard has held out largely out of a reluctance to commercialize its name. That reluctance is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Just listen to this language from the solicitation: “The Harvard Alumni Association World MasterCard offers a rewards program like no other, designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind. Only Crimson Rewards offers valuable perks with exclusive HAA rewards. You will receive one (1) Crimson Reward point for each $1 dollar you spend.* The more you use the card the faster your Crimson Rewards points add up.”

Well, this is just bullshit, of course. This particular MasterCard offers a “rewards program” exactly like every other credit card—reward points, etc. And I love that phrase, “designed with distinguished Harvard graduates in mind.” No, it’s designed for any Harvard grad with a fair-to-middlin’ credit history. But apparently a little sucking-up works.

I’m sure there are good arguments for this move, but there are good arguments against it, too. In a small way, such dishonest and insincere language is already a corruption of veritas.

Interestingly, the proceeds from the card will go to a Summers’ pet project: a “presidential scholars” program to fund graduate students. Summers is taking this step in order to fund a program near and dear to him….

Again, I raise this not to argue that it’s a bad idea, simply to point out a theme.

Writing in the Herald of Everett, Washington, economist James McCusker has perhaps the most thoughtful take on the $50 million payoff that I’ve seen—certainly more so than the Globe or Times.

“Is diversity worth the price?”McCusker asks.

“Clearly,” he continues, “Harvard believes in a market-based solution; they plan to buy the diversity they want on the open market. This, however, implies a market-based value to diversity itself, otherwise there is no way to determine whether $50 million is too much, or too little, to spend. Right now, the precise value of diversity is not so important, for $5 million a year is a bargain price to quiet down the row touched off by Summers with his “women in math and science” ruminations. Eventually, however, like all budget items, diversity has to prove its worth in terms of value for the money.”

The rest of McCusker’s piece is well worth- reading, because he’s right, of course. Just how did Larry Summers come up with that $50 million figure? How do you determine how much diversity is too much, if that’s possible, and how much is not enough? And how much money does it take to get just the right amount?

Interestingly, McCusker suggests that in trying to answer these questions, Harvard will have to become more corporate, as American companies have been confronting these issues for decades.

Since that’s something Summers has been trying to do all along—make Harvard more corporate—this outcome would be no small irony.

The Globe’s Marcella Bomardieri weighs in with her take on the $50 million; she’s slightly more positive than the Times. On the one hand, she writes, “it hasn’t exactly convinced Summers’ critics that he’s a new man.” On the other hand, “some female Harvard scientists are more optimistic than they’ve been in a while.”

Bombardieri is a fine reporter, but this is a silly conclusion. Of course they’re more optimistic. After a national controversy, the president of Harvard finds himself compelled to address a problem—partly of his own making—and throw money at it. He’s going to have to hire more women and pay them better, and he has virtually no leverage in resisting the demands of female faculty members.

So whether or not Summers has changed, he’s got to take steps to improve the lot of women at Harvard because he can’t afford another media controversy and faculty rebellion.

What really matters is this: What happens in a year, when the spotlight is off? And what will be the next shoe to drop at Harvard?