Posted on 03/04/2006 6:00:42 AM PST by oldtimer2
Calling All Hombres A Harvard sage makes the case for manliness.
BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY Saturday, March 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--"Defend yourself." That's the lesson Harvey Mansfield drew for Larry Summers the week before Harvard's president was forced to resign. Mr. Mansfield, a 73-year-old government professor and conservative elder statesman of the university, went on to suggest that Mr. Summers's capitulation to those he offended (when he said women might be biologically less inclined to succeed in the hard sciences) is not simply a craven kowtow to political correctness, but proof, also, of a character flaw. Indeed, Mr. Mansfield continued with a mischievous smile, "He has apologized so much that he looks unmanly."
Perhaps this seems like a quaint insult, but Mr. Mansfield means something very particular by it. He would like to return the notion of manliness to the modern lexicon. His new book, (snip) What you see today at Harvard and elsewhere are a lot of liberal males who are trying to make women happy by trying to treat them as if they weren't women. Despite his statements outside the classroom, Mr. Mansfield sees his role of professor very differently from that of provocateur. His classes rarely descend into debates over current affairs. Arguments from Plato may not convince these "educated women" that he is right, but unlike Larry Summers, Mr. Mansfield has tenure.
Ms. Riley, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's Taste page, is the author of "God on the Quad" (2005), out next month in paperback from Ivan Dee.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
IMHO, once Hollyweird failed to find MANLY replacements for the likes
of William Holden, Charleton Heston, or John Wayne...and putting limp
metrosexuals into lead roles...the cultural idea of "manliness"
just about evaporated.
Unlike Mr. Summers, Mr. Mansfield is a principled leader and teacher. Mr. Summers is a pol that pandered, was elected and turned-out for offending his electorate. Nothing more. Democracy is the rule of fools by fools, whether in academe, the military or society.
Mr. Mansfield is right and not trying to be nice. Tagline...
Yea but, what about Tom Cruise and that new cowboy movie?
Just kidding. ;;-) (4-eyes, I wear glasses!)
Mr. Summers statement about women not being as well equipped to handle the hard sciences is not a new thing. When I was in grad school my endocrinology instructor pointed out that the hypothalamus, located in the forebrain region is much larger in women than in men. The hypothalmus, among other things, controls hormonal balance via the pituitary and it is larger in women because it needs to control the menstrual cycle. But it just so happens that the cerebral cortex located in the forebrain region is where spatial perception and abstract thought are centered. Therefore males have more of the forebrain devoted to spacial perception & abstract thought (very necessary for hard sciences) than women. I wouldn't be surprised if women disagree with this fact however. <:)
It sure looks like the majority of the women faculty at Harvard do (as well as the MIT professor who had to run out of the room to avoid throwing up). But I don't get it. How do hissie fits prove that what can be scientifically demonstrated isn't true?
He must be the loneliest man in Cambridge.
The Science Wars are older than our conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. Read 'Higher Superstition' or 'Flight From Science and Reason', both by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt (an avowed leftie), as intros to the genre of literature. The hoax essay 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' by Alan Sokal and the ensuing controversy is illustrative.
As the end of the article notes, unlike Mr Summers, Mr Mansfireld has tenure.
I can't agree about Summers. Although he caved at the end he put up a good fight and took on bigger issues than Mr Mansfield did in his protected classrooms.
He took on African Studies professor Cornell West, Harvard divestment from Israel, and the last brouhaha the women's gap in science.
For his trouble he got scant support from conservatives who could not see past the fact that he was an ex Clinton appointee and not conservative enough. That was a mistake by conservatives in my opinion, and one we can not afford given the state of campuses today.
thanks for the references; I'd heard of Sokal before but hadn't gotten
around to checking out his work.
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