On Larry Summers
Of the many appointments Obama will make in the coming months, the Treasury Secretary is of outsized importance, given the economic mess the outgoing administration is leaving as a parting gift. Different names have been floated to fill this post. Paul Volker, Jon Corzine and Larry Summers are all said to be on the short list. All could bring strong credentials to the post.
The name Larry Summers was already familiar to me, but in an entirely different, and unpleasant context, owing to the fact that I’m a female scientist.
To those who are unfamiliar with the incident that launched Summers into fame (and infamy) amongst those who didn’t know of him before, Mr. Summers gave a speech at the Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce in which he suggested that one of the reasons for the persistent lack of women in the sciences, especially in engineering, could be due to innate differences between the genders.
You can imagine how that went down with womens groups and female scientists. The ensuing firestorm forced him to resign as president of Harvard University.
So I wrinkled my nose when I heard that he was on the short list for Obama’s Treasury Secretary. According to other economists he’s apparently a brilliant man in his field. I grudgingly accepted that it was more important for the person in charge to be skilled than to be someone I liked.
But a trusted source (who I’ll define by the acronym D.A.D) told me that Summer’s remarks, while very unfortunate, had inproperly maligned a man who had a very much pro-woman, not anti-woman record. In fact he had wide support amongst the student body at Harvard during the time of the controversy.
Many of his colleagues have also defended him through the years. They are coming back now to preemptively defend their friend, presumably in the hopes that he can be named to Treasury Secretary. One of these is economist Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote in HufPo today:
Many people note that our nation has few economists with his intelligence. They should also know that we have few leaders, if any, in the financial world who have done more for women.
The article is worth reading in full.
More nosing about in his past shows that this a guy that is perfectly willing to go up against ideologues. He has faced stiff opposition in Harvard for taking less than liberal positions. He has a history of criticizing the university for anti-Israel views and running Harvard more like a business than many would like. On the other hand his detractors at Harvard have said he was arrogant, blunt and intimidating to those who disagreed with him.
Any number of factors could disqualify Summers for the job. Upon review of his past history however, I’m far more comfortable with the idea of those factors being purely based on economic knowledge and reputation.
Mostly Off Topic: I don’t neccesarily disagree with Summers that there are innate differences between genders, and I certainly disapprove of any subject being off limits for academic discussion. His remarks were very badly put and timed though. I’m also very uneasy about how such innate differences would be used outside the academic world. If there is some correlation between higher mathematical ability and being male I don’t trust society at all to take that as a chance to further coach little girls in the subject and not as an opportunity to simply write off the abilities of girls and use it as a convenient crutch for discrimination.
Actually, during the same speech he had mentioned innated differences between races as well, so it was not only about questioning women’s ability to do science. The sickening part of it was that he gave the example of his OWN daugter as an example of women’s inferiority in the sciences in general.
I’ve heard that he has been blamed for being racist among other things as well, and this culminated in Cornell West’s resigning from Harvard and going to Princeton. He has also expended some language on how underdeveloped nations were contributing nothing of value to the world in general, and engaged in some astonishing rhetoric about it that I can’t remember at this point (A google search in 2005 had brought that up but it’s probably gone by now.)
On the other hand, you can be racist and think of women as inferior and still be a brilliant economist or a scientist. In fact, that’s what has been the norm rather than the exception throughout history.
On the other hand, you can be racist and think of women as inferior and still be a brilliant economist or a scientist. In fact, that’s what has been the norm rather than the exception throughout history.
Yes certainly you can. But I would be extremely distrustful of appointing a hardcore racist or sexist to the position of Treasury Secretary. That position doesn’t just require good economic know-how, you have to be able to handle people. If you don’t actually trust the abilities of women and blacks you are instantly and drastically decreasing the pool of talent you can pull from to solve problems. It’s the reason I don’t see a way for the more conservative Islamic world to advance; they’re discounting the abilities of 50% of their populace because of religious beliefs.
As to Summers being a racist, it looks a lot more like he was a guy who had a feud with a black professor (and Cornell West isn’t the easiest guy to handle either), not someone who has a beef with all black people. Oh he certainly strikes me as politically incorrect, but I don’t particularly see that as a problem. Both racism and sexism are very serious offenses, so the proof used to “convict” someone of them must also be serious.
Again, I found the comments very distasteful, especially as a woman in the sciences. They certainly warrant, at the very least, further examination of his positions. But that further examination has not uncovered a history of sexism, so far as I’ve been able to see.
If there is some correlation between higher mathematical ability and being male I don’t trust society at all to take that as a chance to further coach little girls in the subject and not as an opportunity to simply write off the abilities of girls and use it as a convenient crutch for discrimination.
What is needed though, is more discussion of this topic, not less. Unfortunately people are so reluctant to voice factual statements that might come across as biased or bigoted that the whole topic gets swept under the rug. And unfortunately, even to the extent that the male/female brain and learning differences have been acknowledged it’s led to schools teaching specifically to girls’ needs now and the boys are being neglected.
This is so apparent that just about every parent and teacher I know notices it, and I believe they’re starting to see evidence of it in test scores (girls catching up, but boys starting to do worse instead of having a rise in all of the scores.) I hope that someone catches on and considers starting a franchise of charter schools to use whatever evidence is available to try segregating the genders and teaching accordingly.
I think it’s definitely social conditioning above everything else. There are very subtle ways of turning off girls from the maths and sciences.
I think if girls are starting to exceed expectations and boys are starting to do worse than girls, maybe it’s because girls are actually encouraged a little bit. If you expect better things from girls, you GET better results. In fact, maybe we should think along the line that the boys’ success in the past happened at the expense of girls. It wasn’t because girls were less intelligent.
In the same spirit the success of developed nations happened at the expense of underdeveloped nations. There is an entire legacy of history of colonization and slavery as well as imperialism to explain why lesser developed nations are the way they are and upon whose backs the wealths of entire nations have been built (this is very Cornell West of course). It was not because people residing at underdeveloped nations were lazy or stupid, as Summers has also argued.
To argue otherwise is to promote a white supremacist viewpoint, on top of a sexist one. I realize that the “innate differences” argument is actually quite difficult to debunk, because the evidence in favor of it is supposedly everywhere.
But when you start noticing the potential of the underdog, things may change. If you believe that underdeveloped nations can also be successful, investment may flow into those nations and that may happen at the expense of developed nations. Along the same lines, investing a little bit in girls’ futures and expending energy and efforts upon them may start changing the traditional “observations” of boys outperforming girls. Is that so wrong?
That having been said, I’m so glad that I’m not the daughter of Larry Summers
Along the same lines, investing a little bit in girls’ futures and expending energy and efforts upon them may start changing the traditional “observations” of boys outperforming girls. Is that so wrong?
I think it is wrong in the sense of a pendulum swing which is tending to cause underperformance of boys. There’s no reason that the success of one group has to come at the expense of another. If boys and girls have such different learning styles, then either a blended approach or gender segregation would seem to be the only logical solutions.
Also- the people I’m talking to, parents and teachers- all also have a sense that the academic performance isn’t the only thing faltering with boys in general- it also seems to contribute to social problems, aggression, etc. If so, then it’s not even as benign of a problem as having a generation or two of boys who aren’t going to be quite as successful in careers as past generations.