Shots In The Dark

It's women bumping up against the glass ceiling. Sara Rimer writes about the question of women in math and sciences in this Times article.

Key quote: " Even as the number of women earning Ph.D.'s in science has substantially increased - women now account for 45 percent to 50 percent of the biology doctorates, and 33 percent of those in chemistry - the science and engineering faculties of elite research universities remain overwhelmingly male. And the majority of the women are clustered at the junior faculty rank."

Rimer explains some of the reasons why; she does not mention "intrinsic differences" in aptitude.

That conference at Stanford? Free and open to the public.

Which is to say, not off the record.

Stanford, which may now be Harvard's biggest competitor, is hosting a conference on women in the sciences. Talk about kicking a man when he's down. This kind of thing that makes Stanford look smart and progressive, while Harvard...doesn't. How ironic that one of the reasons Larry Summers was chosen as president of Harvard was to help the university better compete with—yes—Stanford....

Phil Kennicott has this profile of Larry Summers in the Washington Post. ("Fool or Hero," it's blurbed on the Post website, which is a classic example of how newspaper websites can have lower standards than the physical papers; the actual article is titled, "The Man in the Ivory Tower.")

First things first: Summers "declined to speak on the record for this story," almost certainly meaning that he spoke to the reporter but wouldn't allow himself to be quoted or have any information attributed to him. (By most standard journalism rules, anyway.) But unless I'm reading this wrong, Summers did talk to the reporter; he just didn't want it publicly known that he spoke to the guy. Make of that what you will. I remain of the opinion that this is appropriate behavior for a politician, but not a university president.

Kennicott's article is pretty subjective; it's in the "Style" section of the paper. Here's his thesis: "Two...subtle schools of thought prevail to explain the events of Summers's tenure. One is the personality theory: Summers is brilliant, brash and simply likes to stir things up. The other might be called the "dark thread" hypothesis: All of these episodes are connected and that Summers is out to remake Harvard, and perhaps the world, in ways that should be deeply troubling to traditional academics, and perhaps the larger, liberal-left establishment as well. "

Worth pondering. But I'm not sure that the two theses are incompatible. Larry Summers is a complex man. And then, of course, there's always the possibility that he himself doesn't know exactly what he's up to—that there is, in fact, no grand master plan.

A website named "Spiked Liberties" has this report on Larry Summers' address to the Harvard Club of New York last week. Well, actually, it's not much of a report because Summers' remarks were off-the-record. As blogger George Blecher writes, "the President of the Club announced: 'This is a private gathering. All working press - Harvard grads or otherwise - should be advised that President Summers' remarks are completely off the record.'"

Blecher happens to be a supporter of Summers, arguing that he's a victim of a public fear of controversial ideas. But I wonder if even he isn't a little disturbed by the idea of the president of Harvard speaking at a large gathering on an off-the-record basis. Has there ever been a Harvard president before Larry Summers who routinely declared his remarks off-the-record? Isn't there a contradiction between saying that you want to spur public debate and refusing to be quoted? Doesn't that suggest that you want to make "provocative" remarks, but don't want to take responsibility for them?

Back in January, Summers' defenders repeatedly used the argument that his remarks at the NBER conference were supposed to be off-the-record and, therefore, it was unfair to hold him accountable for them. I'm not sure I understand the logic, but I'm more worried about the implications. Under what conditions should the president of the world's most important university insist upon speaking off the record?

Of course, I'm not the president of Harvard, and don't have the bully pulpit that Larry Summers does—fewer people care what I say. But as a point of principle, I don't speak off the record except in very rare circumstances. When you know that you can be quoted, you hold yourself to a higher standard, and avoid the low road.

Politicians speak off the record. Press secretaries, publicists, and spies speak off the record. Professors, journalists, writers, and university presidents...shouldn't.

In the March/April issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter, biologist Nancy Hopkins writes a lengthy (eight-page) explanation of her decision to walk out of Larry Summers' NBER speech. For all those who've written or thought that Hopkins is hysterical, over-emotional, et al, this essay is a must-read. Unfortunately, I can't link to it, because it's on a password-protected site. (A little bird—not Hopkins—sent it to me.)

Hopkins begins with some background on the issue of gender in science, detailing her own experience with a committee that investigated the problem at MIT. "The resulting 150-page report presented vivid evidence of how women professors enter science believing that gender discrimination is a thing of the past, but, as they approach the age of the men in power, suffer marginalization and day-in and day-out biases. These small inequities, as they accumulate, make doing science and attaining top positions much more difficult for women."

She then moves on to the NBER conference, and writes this (italics added):

"Summers told the NBER audience that he would offer three hypotheses to explain the under-representation of women in tenured positions on the faculties of leading universities, particularly in the fields of science, math, and engineering. As set forth in the transcript of his remarks, the three, in order of importance, were: 1. Women's family responsibilities and unwillingness to work the 80 hour week it takes to get to the top; 2. Differences in "intrinsic aptitude" between men and women; and 3. Socialization and discrimination in hiring. Summers dismissed the third hypothesis as unimportant, saying that we overestimate the impact of socialization, and that market forces would work to remove gender bias in hiring within academia. As Summers continued, I became convinced that these hypotheses were in fact his personal beliefs. To those who work in this field, and to many women who worked their way to the top of elite science or engineering, Summers' comments were astonishing because: a) they ignore decades of research that have already disproven much of what he said; and b) they embody the very attitudes that constitute gender bias and that have been shown to hold women back. "

Hopkins then tackles the idea, put forward by Summers' defenders, that dismay over his remarks is misguided, a sad example of political correctness, and a threat to academic freedom (italics hers):

"Were Summers merely a professor in the field who wanted to advance the genetic inferiority of women to do math and science at elite universities, the processes that accompany academic freedom and enable the academy ultimately to discover the truth would kick in. The speaker would be required to present data...ideas would be tested and those found wanting would ultimately be weeded out. But the President is not a researcher in the field, and the processes associated with academic freedom of faculty to do research do not pertain when he speaks. Summers is the boss. His words are the pronouncements and opinions of Harvard University."

Finally, Hopkins writes about the press reaction to her walk-out and subsequent criticisms of Summers' remarks.

"[Hard] to understand, at first, are certain Harvard faculty critics, particularly our former colleague Steven Pinker, who has portrayed me in the press as being opposed to academic debate and inquiry (The New Republic , February 14, pg 15, 2005).... Why would Steve imply such an obvious untruth? Some Harvard faculty told me that Pinker and his popular-press book The Blank Slate were the source for Summers' NBER comments. Having now read the poorly reasoned and unsupported section on gender in Pinker's book, this seems likely. If so, Pinker's defense of Summers makes sense. In fact I think he owes Summers an apology. But he owes me one as well. Ironically, Harvard psychologist Professor Elizabeth Spelke and I were scheduled to debate with Pinker on the Charlie Rose show about research in biology, genetics, and psychology that debunks Pinker's views, but Pinker backed out. The show was cancelled because, they told me, they could not find a psychologist to take Pinker's viewpoint who was willing to appear. "

I'd be curious to hear Pinker's side of this, but if he really did back out of appearing on the Charlie Rose Show, that's not confidence-inspiring.

Finally, Hopkins asks why this incident seems to have taken such a hold on the public imagination. She concludes: "I think the fascination with this story is that we may be witnessing a skirmish in the final battle - a battle to get to the top, the last step in a process that has gone on for millennia. ...Men hold at least 95% of the institutional power in America, and it's not easy to give that up. What many of us are waiting to see in this symbolic struggle is whether women are finally going to achieve equality or not. And I think it's not only men who fear such an outcome. I think many women do, too."

Agree or disagree with Hopkins, she's clearly a serious figure who has been done a disservice by media caricaturing and conservative punditry. Her article deserves widespread distribution; I hope she and MIT post it somewhere public....

Battell Chapel is one of the loveliest spaces at Yale University, but I remember that, as an undergraduate, I barely spent any time there. What went on inside the chapel seemed disconnected from the rest of Yale life. One reason was that the Sunday services there were organized by the United Church of Christ, formerly the Congregational Church, and were intended as much for the New Haven community as for Yale students, if not more. There was a logic to that, since Congregationalists founded Yale, but it certainly meant that the church's impact on the university community was diluted.

Now Yale is ending its official affiliation with the United Church of Christ in order to make the church better reflect the religious diversity of Yale students. This is one of those moves that, while painful, makes a certain amount of sense. Yale is a place of diverse religiosity, and its chapel should reflect that.

It's also something that Larry Summers would very much like to do with Harvard's Memorial Chapel, according to people I've spoken with on both sides of the issue. But I suspect it won't be happening any time soon. This is a fight that Summers can't afford to pick right now....

A fascinating story about Evelyn Fox Keller, an MIT scientist and professor of the history of science who has written extensively about the role of gender in the sciences. (For some reason, it's a hot topic now....)

Key quote:

"Let me make clear from the outset," she wrote in "Reflections," "that the issue that requires discussion is not, or at least not simply, the relative absence of women in science." Women are relatively absent in almost all important intellectual and creative endeavors, she said. But few of these endeavors, she went on, "bear so unmistakably the connotation of masculine in the very nature of the activity."

"To both scientists and their public, scientific thought is male thought," she continued. "Hard" objectivity itself is identified with masculinity, she wrote, and "soft" subjectivity is identified with femininity. "What would it mean for science if it were otherwise?"

I think that's worth pondering without any commentary from me.....

Pat Burson of the Chicago Tribune devotes an entire column to Larry Summers' remarks at the NBER conference in January. The point is to demonstrate how to recover from a gaffe.

"No one is immune from saying something so clumsy, inaccurate, outlandish or uncouth that he or she regrets it," Burson writes. "Fortunately, foot-in-mouth disease need not be fatal, say psychologists, workplace coaches and communications experts, but certain steps are necessary to recover from such a misstep."

Unfortunately for Summers, Burson doesn't mention—and perhaps isn't aware of—Summers' April 7th speech entirely recanting his January remarks. (See "Talking the Talk," below.) And Burson isn't alone in this failing: outside of the Boston media, that speech hasn't been covered at all. Not even the New York Times, which paid enormous attention to Summers' original gaffe, has remarked upon his mea culpa.

This is entirely predictable media behavior—cover the controversy, but not the aftermath—and entirely wrong. If you think the original sin is worth covering, then you have to cover the attempt at redemption as well. It's only fair, and the lack thereof is the kind of thing that makes the general public so cynical about the media. If I were Summers, I'd be fuming....

Harvard associate dean Judith Kidd changed her mind and decided to allow the Harvard Social Forum to protest on-campus recruiting by the CIA and Department of Homeland Security.

That's the right decision, and not just because she was using a technicality as a pretext for prohibiting the protest. Harvard needs every demonstration of passion and idealism it can get, even if, to some, it may seem misguided. Most Harvard students are obsessively pre-professional and politically apathetic, which is an unfortunate state of affairs at our most important university. Signs of independent thought and conviction, and political engagement with the outside world—whether liberal or conservative—are few and far between. The College should encourage, rather than suppress, them.

I know, that's a pipe dream. So I'll settle for "tolerate."

It was quite a 24-hour swing! Thanks to the Harvard Club for hosting such a nice dinner, to the good people at the Harvard Coop for organizing the reading, and to Curt Schilling for serving up a home run pitch to Jason Giambi.

Most of all, thanks to all of those who came to talk about Harvard Rules. It was a pleasure to meet and chat with you. I know how many demands there are on people's time, and I'm always grateful when someone takes the time out of their busy day or evening to come hear an author talk. At the end, I always get the feeling that I've gotten more from the exchange than you have, but I hope that you don't walk away completely unsatisfied.

TIME includes Larry Summers in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world...but it's a little hard to tell why. Here's TIME's write-up, which is available online only to subscribers:

"Harvard's Hit Man

IN 1654, Harvard's first president was run out of office. Henry Dunster declined to baptize his son, believing that only adults should be baptized. And that was the end of him.

Great influence sill brings inordinate scrutiny. Larry Summers, Harvard's current president, was hired in 2001 to centralize authority and shake things up. But Summers, who fancies himself a provocateur, proved uncommonly impolitic. After he told celebrity Afro-American studies profess Cornel West that he lacked gravitas, West defected to Princeton. In January Summers, 50, speculated that "intrinsic aptitude" differences might explain why so few women hold tenured science posts. He has apologized, to no avail.

The only thing more surprising than Summers' recklessness is how much people care. In March a faculty no-confidence vote (which had no practical import) made headlines as far away as Australia. No one is more stunned than Summers. Showing off newly acquired restraint, he tries to explain: "Harvard is one of the two or three most recognized names in the world." On the upside, he gets better access to foreign leaders than when he was President Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary. "I got much more of [China's former president] Jiang Zemin's time." --by Amanda Ripley"

This piece certainly make an argument for visibility. But influence? I'm not sure that's happened yet. At least, not in a constructive way.

Harvard College deans say they won't allow a protest against CIA and Department of Homeland Security recruiting on campus because the protesters failed to fill out an online form....

Given Larry Summers' well-known antipathy to student activism of any sort, and the flimsiness of the pretext for the ban, one has to wonder if this prohibition isn't coming from the top....

I'm off to the Delta Shuttle. Hope to see you at the Harvard Coop, 12 PM tomorrow, for some good conversation about books, Harvard, Yankees-Red Sox, and anything else that may be on your mind....

Last summer during the GOP convention, New York City police arrested almost 2,000 demonstrators, most of whom seemed to be doing little more than walking down the street. Not all of the arrested were even demonstrating. Some of them were people who just happened to be, well, walking down the street. Mayor Bloomberg had pledged to the Republicans that the city would be orderly for their convention—this would be no Chicago, 1968—and the police made it so.

Now the New York Times reports what seemed obvious at the time: that police were arresting people without cause—and lying about it. At one of the first trials of an arrested demonstrator, one cop testified that it took four officers to hold the guy down. But according to the Times, "A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints."

Another man, Alexander Dunlop, claimed that he was arrested while going to pick up sushi. Police presented one piece of video at his trial; volunteer videographers showed that it had been selectively edited; prosecutors immediately dropped the charges.

What's become blindingly obvious is that the NYPD was determined to arrest people simply for exercising their constitutional right to free speech and assembly.

I hope some of these folks file lawsuits. But the real responsibility for this lies with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A billionaire who owns a media company, he should know better. Or maybe he's just used to controlling what gets shown in the press....

That the rebutting evidence has come from amateur videographers shows just how important the democratization of technology is for subverting authoritarian behavior. From video cameras to blogs, ordinary people have the tools to speak truth to power, and make sure that power feels the consequences. When will the Michael Bloombergs of the world realize this? Probably only around election time.

How ironic that the only videographers who didn't get this story are the TV networks "covering" the convention....

Larry Summers on a t-shirt! Inspired by Che Guevara! On sale from—no kidding—the Harvard Republican Club. One way or another, you know this is going to be a collector's item....

In protest of Larry Summers' remarks on women in science, the Harvard Undergraduate Council has voted to change Harvard's color from red to pink. That, at least, is what the Daily Pennsylvanian says, and I always believe what I read in the Daily Pennsylvanian.

I've always liked Bob Dole. As Kansas senator, he seemed a little too honest for politics—which is to say that he knew what he was supposed to do, the rituals in which he was supposed to partake, but somehow he just couldn't bring himself to fake it. He cared about the process of legislation, about making the Senate function well, about minimizing the amount of puffery and claptrap in public life. That's one reason, I suppose, why he made such a lousy presidential candidate. When he thought something was bogus, he couldn't hide his feelings.

Now Dole has written a new book, "One Soldier's Story," that tells of his Kansan childhood and his experience in wartime. From the Times review of it, the story of what happened to him in World War II is horrifying and inspiring at the same time. Trying to rescue a wounded man while taking fire from German soldiers hidden inside a French farmhouse.... Dole still sounds terse and stoic about his heroism and his injuries. In a culture where Donald Trump is a modern-day hero, there's something admirable about that. I hope "A Soldier's Story" is a big hit.

Cathy Young waves the flag for "intellectual diversity" on campuses in the Globe today. She decries the "leftward tilt of the American professoriat"—wait till she checks out the French professoriat!—and faults its intellectual arrogance. Just look at the reaction to Larry Summers' remarks on women in science, Young writes.

What's striking is how, in proposing ways to address the "problem," Young adopts the language of affirmative action. She speaks of a "perhaps unconscious" bias and suggests that "on a subtler level, there is on many campuses a climate in which a ''normal" person is presumed to be liberal."

Young writes: "Some conservatives want a political solution: legislation that would not only protect the rights of dissenting students but penalize professors who use the classroom to push a political agenda. Many professors are appalled, understandably, by the idea of legislative intervention in the classroom. The best way to avoid such intervention is for the academy to make a good-faith effort to recognize and correct its intellectual diversity problem."

This is such an ideological mish-mash that it's hard to deconstruct. But essentially Young's saying that the federal government should let colleges fix the alleged problem their own way, which is pretty much what Lee Bollinger, Larry Summers and others said in the context of affirmative action.

I think this particular cause is a bit nuts. But whether conservatives are advocating federal intervention or affirmative action on the issue, they're abandoning their own principles of up-by-your-bootstraps federalism. Is it possible that they're conceding that sometimes, when you don't have the power, laissez-faire capitalism isn't enough?

Maybe lamenting the lack of ideological diversity will make them more sympathetic to the question of ethnic and economic diversity on campus. But somehow I doubt it.

Sometimes the un-hipness of the Times really is startling. Take, for instance, today's story on how upcoming magazine Radar is launching a website before it publishes its first physical issue. The Times treats this like a revelation. "The strategy is highly unusual," says Katharine Q. Seelye.

I suppose...but isn't there a "so what" factor here? Most magazines have websites to go along with the paper product. And most readers ignore them, except when they're looking up an old article, which generally can't be found anyway.

Ah, but Radar's website will be different, Seelye explains. "The Web site will not reproduce the magazine's contents but instead offer fresh takes daily on the news and gossip and will showcase a series of features.

"These will include a stock ticker with the relative popularity of various celebrities ("Trump up by three over Tina Brown!" Mr. Roshan intoned). There will be "after-death" interviews when the departed are back in the news (say, with Howard Hughes when "The Aviator" came out).

"And fans of the interactive will have a chance to post pictures of themselves on the Web site for 15 minutes along with a sentence or two about why they should be famous. All the while, a clock will tick down their 15 minutes."

Let us translate this: Radar's website will not feature any actual content that Radar has to spend money on.

As for the aforementioned website features...well, since I am a fan of new magazines and people who start them, perhaps it is best to say nothing at all.

Oh, all right, one thing: Donald Trump over Tina Brown by 3? Is there anyone who could possibly give a damn?

Because I wrote a book about John Kennedy, a number of people have mentioned this New York Times story to me. It relates how John and his sister Caroline bought an apartment for Marta Sgubin, described as the "longtime cook and companion" to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The Times presents the purchase as an act of pure benevolence. John and Caroline "made the purchase after they decided to sell their mother's apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, at 85th Street, and worried about what would happen to Ms. Sgubin, who lived there and whom they had come to consider tantamount to a member of the family."

...

"'It was clear to me that Marta Sgubin's happiness was of paramount importance to John Kennedy and to his sister, Caroline,' [real estate broker Kathy] Sloane said."

I don't know the details, but I have a feeling that the situation is more complicated than portrayed. After all, if John and Caroline simply wanted to buy the woman a place to live, why did Caroline only transfer the title now, a decade after they bought the apartment?

The Kennedys reward loyalty, it's true. But they also know that a longtime companion to Jackie O. would possess a horde of personal information that would prove lucrative in the tell-all market.

Isn't it possible that John and Caroline bought the apartment for Sgubin both because they wanted to thank her and as a kind of insurance policy, to buy her silence? Thanks for the years of service. But talk about them, and you're out....

I write this not to be petty, because, after all, you can't blame the Kennedys for being concerned about this issue. People who come into contact with the Kennedys do write books about the family. (Some, I hope, more well-intentioned than others.)

But the story is more interesting when you understand what's really involved. (The Times write-up is essentially a wet kiss to Caroline Kennedy.)

As a writer interested in the anthropology of power, I think this is a fascinating example of the problems faced by the rich and powerful in a tabloid society—and of how they can address those problems in a way that the rest of us can not. And then get a puff piece in the New York Times out of the whole thing.

And on the subject of class... it's interesting that, while the Times quotes Ed Schlossberg [Caroline's husband] and real estate broker Sloane, they don't actually talk to Sgubin herself. It's worth pondering why that might be the case. Perhaps Sgubin knows that the paper really isn't interested in her....

Reminds me of the Times story on Harvard's Dormaid in which the paper never bothered to talk to the people who actually clean students' rooms....

I'll be appearing at the Harvard Coop on Wednesday, April 12th, at noon.

This should be interesting—the last time I was up in Cambridge, about a month ago, I stopped in the Coop to sign a stack of books. As I was putting my John Hancock on paper, a woman sidled up to me and whispered, "You have done us all a great service." Turned out her husband was a faculty member at Harvard and she was tired of him coming home filled with Larry Summers-related frustration.

Meanwhile, one of the clerks told me that Harvard Rules was selling very well—but that customers tended to ask for bags in which to hide it as soon as they bought it.

Don't be shy, Harvard! If the entire country is talking about your problems in public, so can you....

Seriously—I know that the atmosphere at Harvard has become so polarized, Harvard Rules might be seen by some as partisan. In fact, it's more of an attempt to show the exercise of power in a university presidency. Whether that exercise is for better or worse, it's more Harvard's job to judge than mine.

I also want to thank the Coop in advance for having the guts to schedule this discussion. Let's just say that not every local bookstore would do the same.

The story of manure-thief (and Harvard economist) Martin Weitzman continues to provoke confused laughter around the country, as in this essay in the Wisconsin State Journal. It doesn't help that Weitzman is, apparently, a specialist in the microeconomic theory of environmental economics. (Whatever that means.) Perhaps he was researching economies of scale in excrement-theft.

The weird thing is that Weitzman has apparently been stealing shit for years. There's clearly some deeper psychology involved here. I mean, pilfering diamonds or Van Goghs is one thing. But stealing manure? That does suggest a problem with self-esteem....

Anyway, here's this conclusion from columnist Bill Wineke: "Had Weitzman taught microeconomics at the University of Utah, his horse-manure thievery would never have made national news. The moral is, if you're going to be a Harvard economist, be prepared to pay for your horse apples."

How's your Portuguese? The Brazilian magazine Epoca has this write-up of Harvard Rules and the Lawrence Summers controversy. Brazil is a country that's close to my heart, so it's a delight to have the book written about there.... Obrigado, Epoca.