NYT: Lawrence Summers, Provocateur

[DeepModem Mom]

Lawrence Summers, Provocateur
By JAMES TRAUB
Published: January 23, 2005

LAWRENCE SUMMERS is at it again. Three years had passed since the blithely tactless president of Harvard University and former Treasury Secretary said something that grossly offended one of his institution's core constituencies, and the academic world generally. (In 2001, he said that "serious and thoughtful people" - including Harvard professors - "are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in effect if not their intent" and that too many people - including Harvard professors - "when they think of police, think too quickly of Chicago in 1968.")

Mr. Summers appeared to have locked himself in whatever padded room universities presidents normally occupy. And then, this month, he escaped: He suggested at an economics conference that the low representation of women scientists at universities might stem from, among other causes, innate differences between the sexes.

Mr. Summers's provocative yodel set off a worldwide avalanche of commentary and condemnation. One of the most prominent female scientists at M.I.T. walked out in the middle of the talk; a Harvard faculty committee on women wrote the president a letter saying he had done grave damage to the university's reputation.

Mr. Summers was forced to don the hairshirt. He personally apologized to Harvard's standing committee on women. He was, he said, only trying to "stimulate various kinds of statistical research" and was dedicated to increasing the number of female scientists at Harvard. It may be another three years at least before Mr. Summers slips out of the padded room for another talk on the wild side....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/weekinreview/23trau.html