Week Ten
In Response to Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Summers' January of 2005 speech at NBER's conference on diversity was troubling to say the least. He begins by stating that he is "speaking unofficially," but perhaps what Mr. Summers forgot was that "speaking unofficially" does not mean speaking as if you are NOT the president of Harvard. That being said, Mr. Summers' remarks seem far from presidential. Even within his first paragraph, Summers has already made comments that impair his argument and are frankly, unnecessary. He states that the lack of women in tenure positions is neither the "most important problem or the most interesting problem." He goes on to say, but even though it is not an important or interesting problem, he is willing to take it into "serious" consideration, because after all he is just that nice of a guy...looking out for the little guy (or in this case woman.)
Summers also states that there is underrepresentation everywhere. He then uses the examples of Catholics in investment banking, white guys playing in the NBA, or even Jews in farming. It seems that the president of Harvard, lord of all the country's great minds and academics, would have had a colleague or fellow scholar nearby to say, "dude, those are the worst examples you could pick." I guess with all those departments and research at his fingertips, Summers just wanted to do something crazy for once. And this lack of research is a problem that Summers has multiple times in his speech. In Bublick's response, she too criticizes Summers use of his own daughters as examples. (Examples that are backed by no academic research.) She states, "Can a woman fail to receive her Ph.D. in physics...because Summers' two-year-old daughters once played with trucks in a way that made them seem like dolls...?" Bublick picks apart Summers' daughter example by making the point that her sons did this and anecdotes like this can be interpreted many ways, especially with no research or studies behind them.
In the end it is appalling what Summers says, even if what he means is not appalling, what he says sure is. Summers spoke, not as the president of Harvard, not as someone who has been in academia long enough to know that providing evidence to a claim is important, and certainly not someone who has "made an effort to think in a very serious way."