Twenty years ago, Larry Summers gave his infamous speech in which he declared that the shortage of women in science was due to their intellectual deficiencies — women just weren’t smart enough to succeed in science. It was all part of a disturbing favor for genetic determinism that still afflicts science.
Just days before the 17 January national holiday, an African-American professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) charged that racism was a factor in his tenure denial. And on 14 January the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, triggered a national uproar when he said at an academic conference that genes and personal choices may help explain why so few women are leaders in science and engineering fields. Summers later apologized, but his contrite words aren’t expected to end the controversy.
No one denies that science and engineering faculty members at major research universities remain overwhelmingly white and male, despite large numbers of women and minorities at the undergraduate and graduate levels. But why this is the case is an explosive subject. Summers lit the fuse last week at a meeting on women and minorities in science and engineering, put on by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he cited data showing that more boys than girls score at the high and low ends on standardized math and science tests. Nearly simultaneously, MIT biologist James Sherley charged publicly that colleagues undervalue his research because he is black.
According to participants at the off-the-record NBER meeting, Summers argued that women typically do not work the 80-hour weeks common to professions like law, business, or science. And while noting that socialization and bias may slow the progress of women, he cited the gender variation in test scores as a possible explanation for the larger number of men at the top of the professional ladder.
It’s true that that stupid speech had consequences. A year later, that (and some financial conflicts of interest, but don’t we all expect that of economics/business guys? They’re an unethical bunch) led to him stepping down from his position as president of Harvard. But don’t worry for him, he then bounced right back, serving as Director of the White House United States National Economic Council under Obama, and more recently, he’s on the board of directors for OpenAI (another collection of lying opportunists who don’t even know what ethics is.) He’s still a tenured professor at Harvard.
Ironically, a writer for the Harvard Salient, a conservative student paper at that university is now defending Summers, claiming that his lecture on women’s inadequacy was the start of “cancel culture.”
Twenty years ago, Harvard President Lawrence Summers delivered a speech at an economics conference which, as a later Crimson article asserts, “started the war.” As a student in 2005, I viewed the event as a simple battle between open inquiry and political correctness. As an alum looking back, I see it as the debut of what we know today as cancel culture.
That’s sort of true, in that “cancel culture” has been mysteriously ineffective at delivering real consequences to its targets. Please, please, please…you can get me fired for being politically incorrect if afterwards I’m brought in to advise the president and to take a seat on a very wealthy board.
Well, Larry Summers might be paying the price soon, as the heat from his association with Jeffrey Epstein rises. He has made a shame-faced admission. He wants out of the limelight!
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he told Politico in a statement.
“I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”
The left-leaning thinktank Center for American Progress told the Guardian that Summers is ending his position as “distinguished senior fellow”.
His comments come after lawmakers on both sides of the aisle urged companies and institutions to cut ties with Summers. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren told CNN that Summers should be held accountable for his years-long relationship with Epstein.
This should have happened twenty years ago. For some reason, a lot of people have maintained and sought out relationships with this old arrogant asshole, why, I don’t know. He was poison in 2005, people should have run away from any association with him at all. It took a few words from Epstein to finally kill his career. Also, why did the Center for American Progress affiliate with him at all?
It’s Republicans who demonstrate the greatest hypocrisy, though.
A senior Trump administration official told Politico that institutions should end their association with Summers, given the relationship he had with Epstein, who referred to himself in one November 2018 message as Summers’ “wing man”.
“It’s shocking that Larry Summers remains a paid contributor to Bloomberg News, on the board of OpenAI and tenured at Harvard,” the anonymous source told Politico. “What more revelations about him and his “wing man” will it take for institutions to cut him loose? The British government immediately sacked their ambassador to the US over much less.”
Oh, really? He should have been denied various professional associations thanks to his friendly relationship with a known pedophile? Fine, I agree. Now apply the same reasoning to Epstein’s bestest buddy and fellow party animal, Donald Trump. What will it take for senior Trump administration officials to wake up and realize their boss is even more entangled in Epstein’s slimy web?
Uh… you’re assuming they don’t know that? I mean sure, they aren’t the sharpest spoons in the drawer, but they’re not that dumb are they?
what numerobis wrote; in this his second term, he has purged any independent officials (those who prioritise law, ethics, or institutional duty) and instead installed loyalists. Their jobs depend on not “waking up”.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
(Upton Sinclair)
What will it take for senior Trump administration officials to wake up and realize their boss is even more entangled in Epstein’s slimy web?
The second that happens, the rehabilitation of Epstein is on its way…
I’ll never understand these people. I mean, I don’t really want to understand them, but even their despicable behaviour has no internal consistency, which confuses me.
Most of these racists present like enormous egos. So why do they keep trying to claim that the only reason for their own success is that they were born white and male? Every time you claim that women are genetically inferior at X, you’re claiming that your own success in X is nothing special; its just your genes. I’d think their egos wouldn’t support it.
I genuinely can’t tell if he was sucking up to Epstein in the hopes of getting Epstein’s money or because he actually wanted Epstein’s advice on how to be a better creep/sex offender. It’s so hard to tell.
So much for the idea that you have to be smart to study/teach at Harvard.
‘Quiet, piggy’: Trump responds to reporter after Epstein question
Well that certainly convinces me that his wild, sexist days of the 90’s are over and he is mature and presidential now.
/s
“It’s true that that stupid speech had consequences. A year later, that …. led to him stepping down from his position as president of Harvard.”
Hmmm. I was at Harvard at the time, and my recollection is that a major factor in his loss of university support was quite different: his treatment of Cornel West, who in anger left Harvard and went (back) to Princeton. The issue at the time was the classic dispute over faculty governance, and a feeling that in the Cornel West case and others, Summers was acting too dictatorially — if that’s a word — and needed to step down. The fact that the women in science incident was a year earlier might also suggest that it was not much of factor….. I suppose only Larry knows.
@devnll:
You’re trying to attach logical consistency to these people. A lot of these people don’t deal in logical consistency, they deal in emotional consistency. Anything that flatters them is good, even if the things that flatter them are mutually inconsistent when looked at logically.
The people who make the biggest noise about how they’re ‘truly rational’ are the ones who are crap at it. Just like the ones who make the biggest noise about ‘free speech’ are the ones who usually only want it for themselves and want to shut everybody else up.
@silvrhalide:
There’s another option, of course. Summers didn’t need money (he already had lots, especially as President of Harvard) and he didn’t really need hints on how to be a creep. What he needed was the feeling that he was important because he was friends with this person who knew other important people. He needed validation that the sort of creepiness he was discussing was perfectly normal; he wanted to talk to somebody who understood.
@1 numerobis
I mean sure, they aren’t the sharpest spoons in the drawer, but they’re not that dumb are they?
I was just reading an interesting essay by Emmanuel Todd Bons baisers de Russie who seems to be arguing that this sort of thing may be more cultural. My French is rather rusty but I think if I apply what he’s writing about, he would argue that US culture at this level is more performance than real culture. So it can take a while to realise “everyone does it” may not play well to MAGA or anyone else.
I’d say they are culturally limited not intellectually stupid though I would not discount that either.
Delayed justice?
I am going on a Donald – shaped tangent here to share some good news (crossposted on the infinite thread)
“Trump’s Georgia Prosecution Is Finally Back On Track”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=b4HG_rwvNGc
The prosecution under Georgia jurisdiction concerns Trump, Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell and many others.
@8 That’s an interesting take. It’s more in line with incels’ groupthink where the object is to degrade women and mock outsiders (Chads, Beckys, Stacys, etc.).
Larry Summers is unquestionably wealthy, but not on a scale like Epstein or Larry Ellison. So I could see a certain amount of sucking up to wealthier donors as a means of fleecing them.
And then there’s a different type of mentality. (Trigger warning.)
https://jimhopper.com/pdf/lisakmiller2002.pdf
Basically, the study reveals (among other things) that men are perfectly willing to confess to rape as long as you don’t actually call it rape. Given that, I wonder how much of the conversation between Summers and Epstein was stupid bragging rights and how much was cognitive dissonance–in essence, they don’t consider themselves rapists or sex offenders because they don’t see what they did as rape or other sexual assault, mixed in with a prodigious amount of entitlement. Like Packwood’s infamous diary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Packwood
silvrhalide@11–
No need to call it something else. The 2025 Ten to Men report (an Australian initiative on intimate partner violence) showed that 35% of adult men reported ever using intimate partner violence. Breaking it down, 32% created fear in their partner, 9% physically hurtg them, and 2% sexually assaulted them. As a self-reported survey that allowed respondents to skip questions without answering, this almost certainly underestimates the real prevalence.
The questions asked were very direct:
Unlike Lisak & Miller, the respondents came from the general population, not from imprisoned sex offenders, and only investigated intimate partner violence, not sexual violence against people other than intimate partners. Both studies are horrifying.
And then there’s a 2024 study from the Australian Institute of Criminology showing that 26% of men and 18% of women aged 18-45 admitted to committing at least one act of sexual violence in their lifetime. Another self-reported survey, so another underestimate, and once again the questions were very clear.
Reginald Selkirk @6. Yep, I saw that. Odd that he identifies with Ralf. I always thought of him more as a Jack type…
chrislawson @12,
I don’t disagree with the overall implications of the Ten to Men report, but I think that the phrasing of the emotional abuse question is quite poor. Unlike the physical abuse question, it neither provides any specific examples of abusive actions, nor includes the “when you were angry” part to clarify motivation or intent. So it’s hardly surprising that far more men answered “yes” to it than to the others.
E.g., I would say that I’ve made all my long-term partners frightened or anxious at some point, but the triggering actions and motivations are all over the map: sometimes I did something genuinely self-destructive; sometimes I had a hobby (like walking and cycling at night) that they considered reckless; sometimes we were simply in a long-distance relationship and they were anxious about a possible breakup because I had attractive local friends. In none of those cases did I deliberately make them frightened or anxious, nor was I angry with them or anything like that–they just cared a lot about me, so they frequently had strong positive or negative emotions about my behavior.
In the other direction, I can’t say I have any loved ones who haven’t made me frightened or anxious at some point. That’s mostly not their fault; I just worry about people.
Quite honestly, I’m probably one of the white male young people who are statistically “supposed” to run over to the dark side and claim any position of any female and/or minority colleagues.
Even though I produced some research which solves very long-standing open problems (most recently a problem of Solovay from the 60s), which one might think would give one a chance at a tenured position, I don’t think that the problem is the presence of minorities at universities.
What IS a problem is when people who are clearly dedicated to science (and in addition produce results that are quite competitive) have to live in poverty and without recognition. In that sense, this seems to be a fault of our society which does not seem to value the scientific enterprise in the way it should. Also, in my particular case, I’ve found quite a few new, innovative proofs that would shorten the time it takes to learn some theorems (and indeed subjects) quite considerably. If I were able to teach those, we would have better students. It is a shame. And my mathematical colleagues appear to only respond (if at all) to work that I do in their immediate subject.
The solution appears to me to increase funding for the sciences. Also, we have to get the message out about how science really helps people in their everyday lives. I was quite surprised (and in fact moved to tears) when I found that No. 1 on this list:
https://scienceheroes.com/component/content/article/who-saved-the-most-lives-in-history333?Itemid=27
was a native of the German city of Cologne (where I spent a miserable time, most of my life) who later in life proceeded to become a heavy drinker (because he couldn’t deal with the Nazi administration).
In your subject, one of the outstanding heroes would be Norman Borlaug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug).
Has everyone seen thus horrific video of a Trump-Epstein victim?
That counts as open inquiry for this author? Some Jeapardy switcheroo, phrase it like a question and suddenly the mostly plainly wrong ideas are worth a good think?
In that case, the right response would probably have been “I wonder if this guy doesn’t get it because he’s just less capable of coherent thought than the rest of humanity? Don’t get mad, bro, I’m just asking questions.”
As far as Trump, Summers, and Epstein go they’re all just parasites who thought they could pretend to be at the top of the food chain. And they were right, for far too long. So now they’re doing this weird shuffle between being aggrieved that their perceived privilege to molest girls has been challenged and scurrying like cockroaches away from any public disclosure that they were doing that or were associated with anyone who was.
@12 Lisak & Miller’s study subjects were from a local university, not a prison. Check the Methods section. So Lisak & Miller’s subjects came from the general population too.
Although given the crimes that they confessed to, they probably should have been incarcerated.
@15 The questions in the Lisak & Miller were far more specific
There’s really not a lot of room for misunderstanding in those questions. And some men apparently answered them in the affirmative–as long as the word “rape” or “abuse” wasn’t used.
@16 The Bosch Haber process is generally believed to be responsible for about 40% of the world population living today. But Fritz Haber was also the father of chemical warfare, whose work was used to develop Zyklon-A. Zyklon-B was essentially Zyklon-A with the warning smell removed, used in the Holocaust to gas people in the concentration camps. Haber was not a particularly nice guy–his wife, Clara Immerwahr, expressed her opinion of the direction of his work by committing suicide with his service pistol. The day after she died, he left his only child, his son, behind to return to the WWI effort. Not convinced he is hero material.
Semmelweiss didn’t make the list? He died crazy (also displayed wildly inappropriate social behavior) but his germ theory changed biology and modern medicine forever.
silvrhalide @19,
15 The questions in the Lisak & Miller were far more specific
And the proportions of men who answered them in the affirmative were correspondingly far lower.
I don’t say that to minimize the issue; the fact that 6.4% of the sample openly admitted to deliberate rape is still breathtaking. And the fact that most of the rapes were committed by admitted but unconvicted repeat rapists, with 14% of the latter being individually responsible for 9-50 rapes each, suggests that our culture is very good at ignoring or excusing these habitual predators. Probably because we tend to misrepresent rape as either “sex a woman regrets afterwards,” “an innocent mistake due to intoxication or miscommunication,” or “something that only [insert marginalized population here] do.”