Re: Bruno, Galileo, and Harvard University

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

flash wrote:
> examples of peer review turning into peer group pressure. Who was it at
> Harvard who was run out in a rail a year or so ago because he suggested,
> hypothetically, that one of three possible explanations why there are
> fewer women than men in mathematics is that (maybe) they're less
> interested in it?
It was in 2005, when the then-president of Harvard, Lawrence
Summers, "impoltely tried to answer a question about why
relatively few women [sic; should be woman] professors at Harvard
are in fields like physica, chemistry, and enginering. Summers
attributed the disparity to personal choice based on disposition."
It gets worse; Title IX forbids "gender discrimination in
institutions receiving federal funds." Heretofore it has mostly
been used against athletic programs. But if all disparity in
numbers is, as the radical feminists maintain, caused by
discrimination, then it can now be turned against academic
science departments. And this is said to be plannd. (John
Tierney's New York Times science blog of7/15/08, for which I
don't have the exact URL.)

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx