Yesterday, the New York Times covered the controversy over the remarks of Lawrence H. Summers under this headline: "No Break in the Storm Over Harvard President’s Words."
The Times quoted a dean from another university as saying the aftermath was an "intellectual tsunami," reported that a physics professor had sent "a note to his students assuring them that they were appreciated," quoted from "an angry e-mail message" sent by an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — who had taken a "demanding theoretical math sequence" at Harvard 28 years ago — and asserted that "[p]erhaps the most outraged were prominent female professors at Harvard" (a total of one was quoted in the article).
According to the Boston Globe, here is a summary of the remarks (no transcript is available) that got Summers into this trouble:
In his talk Friday at a conference on women and minorities in science and engineering, held at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers listed three possible explanations for the small number of women who excel at elite levels of science and engineering.
He said he was deliberately being provocative, as he was asked to do by the organizers, and relying on the scholarship that was assembled for the conference rather than offering his own conclusions.
His first point was that women with children are often unwilling or unable to work 80-hour weeks.
His second point was that in math and science tests, more males earn the very top scores, as well as the very bottom scores. He said that while no one knew why, "research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people attributed to socialization" might actually have a biological basis — and that the issue needed to be studied further.
Summers’ third point was about discrimination, and he said it was not clear that discrimination played a significant role in the shortage of women teaching science and engineering at top universities. However, he concluded by emphasizing that Harvard was taking many steps to boost diversity.
For these remarks, Summers issued a lengthy letter of apology yesterday.
Those interested in more dispassionate coverage than in intellectual tsunamis, angry emails, sensitive physics professors, and speculation on who "perhaps" might be the "most outraged," might consult the Harvard Crimson, which ran six different stories yesterday: here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Here is an excerpt from the Crimson’s interview with Johnstone Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker, who teaches the popular Harvard core class "The Human Mind:"
PINKER: First, let’s be clear what the hypothesis is — every one of Summers’ critics has misunderstood it.
The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of men’s and women’s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identical — that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women (both implying that there would be a slightly higher proportion of men at the high end of the scale).
It does not mean that all men are better at quantitative abilities than all women! That’s why it would be immoral and illogical to discriminate against individual women even if it were shown that some of the statistical differences were innate.
CRIMSON: Were President Summers’ remarks within the pale of legitimate academic discourse?
PINKER: Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa.
CRIMSON: Finally, did you personally find President Summers’ remarks (or what you’ve heard/read of them) to be offensive?
PINKER: Look, the truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is “offensive” even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry.
Put the New York Times in that group. It is a measure of the current status of the Paper Formerly Known as the Paper of Record that its journalism has sunk below that of a student newspaper.
But at least, in this case, its coverage didn’t risk physical harm to those who strayed from the approved text.