Take two and call me in the morning.
Posted on 02/21/2006 3:33:27 PM PST by lsilver5
The National Organization for Women calls for the resignation of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who has failed to lead the prominent (and previously all-male) university toward true inclusion of women. His recent comments generated a firestorm of response from Harvard/Radcliffe women who were outraged that he would embarrass Harvard with such a public demonstration of sexism and ignorance. "Summers' suggestion that women are inferior to men in their ability to excel at math and science is more than an example of personal sexism, it is a clue to why women have not been more fully accepted and integrated into the tenured faculty at Harvard since he has been president," said NOW President Kim Gandy. According to reports, the number of female faculty receiving tenure has declined over the past four years — down to just four of the last 32 tenure offers in the school's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Harvard University holds itself out as the pinnacle of higher education in this country," said Gandy. "Such an esteemed institution should set a standard for other colleges and universities — a standard that Lawrence Summers appears unable to maintain." Nearly a week after his comments — made at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference on women and people of color in science and engineering — Summers finally issued a carefully-worded apology, in which he regretted the impact of his statements. However, the damage will persist, as will the questions about his true commitment to inclusion, as long as he remains a leader in higher education. "The women of Harvard — professors, students and alums — merit more than a belated and defensive 'I'm sorry,'" said Gandy. "How can they trust that Summers is committed to equality for women when he doesn't seem to believe that discrimination exists?" In Summers' Jan. 14 remarks, he proposed that innate genetic differences between the sexes may be one explanation for why fewer women succeed in math and science careers. NOW applauds the women who challenged his comments at the conference and afterward. We thank the hundreds (if not thousands) of women who have written to newspapers and to Summers directly to set him straight about the challenges that face women in still-non-traditional fields. "The notion that women are innately inferior to men is simply archaic," said Gandy. "For decades, women have been making dramatic advances in science and technology fields while negotiating a minefield of gender stereotypes and obstacles created by ignorance. It has been a rocky road, but women have risen to the challenge. It's time to remove the barriers, and one of them is Lawrence Summers." NOW will be watching Harvard University. Will Harvard encourage women as students in the "hard" sciences, promote more women in faculty positions, and step up the recruitment of women for teaching positions in math and science departments? Or will Harvard be thwarted in achieving these goals with Summers at the helm? "Apologies are not enough," said Gandy. "Summers must go, and Harvard must start with a clean slate." Read a statement by Dr. Donna J. Nelson, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma and a recipient of NOW's 2004 Woman of Courage Award.
Bummer. I had hoped he'd prevail.
When they come with a Karla Gauss or maybe an Archimeda, they will have more of a case.
I call for the resignation of every last "woman" or man-wannabe.... to resign from NOW. They've already screwed up a generation or two. And what did we get? Metrosexuals and a scarcety of real men.
Big mistake, letting in the women. Things were better when they were corraled at Radcliffe with their own library.
< No flames, please! >
I was at Jesus College, Cambridge, for a year too, before they let the ladies in. Very pleasant and relaxing. The fellows' wives were invited to a few special occasions, but otherwise it was all men. And the ladies didn't mind it in the least. They had their own friends and engagements, and the last thing they wanted was to sit around the dining table in an unheated hall listening to professional small talk.
I wonder if NOW will call for paragraph breaks in long articles.
Oh I feel faint
Yup......and they all longed to be his next humidor!
Seems like the "real" men are Muslim now.
They get away with beating their wives and murdering their daughters every day.
Dykes out of vibrator batteries allert!
Good old Harvard, where when women law students were finally allowed in, they could only raise their hands to ask questions on Fridays.
I call for the revokation of NOW's non-profit status.
Something the man never said, BTW. What he said was that the spread of the ability of men to test well in these disciplines was broader than that of women; men appear with both higher and lower scores than women, where women's scores cluster more in the middle. He suggested that it would be a reasonable subject for scientific research to find out why.
Larry Sommers would call for the resignation of NOW, but they're clearly too stupid to understand him.
These days, they can't keep the women out entirely, but you can get them down to under 20% by just requiring calculus.
Wasn't it Charles Murray who wrote about that in The Bell Curve?
My observation is that many girls lose a lot of ground in high school with math and science, especially if the school is typical co-ed. Even smart girls are afraid of being pegged as nerds.
Air drop NOW into Saudi Arabia and let them know what real discrimination against women is...
Take two and call me in the morning.
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