What Larry Summers Got Right

摘要

I was all set to have my regular chat on the phone last week with my 19-year-old niece Chloe, a sophomore at Harvard, when I got an e-mail from her asking if we could reschedule. She was so busy with schoolwork, she said in her message, that she couldn't spare any time to talk with her dear aunt for the rest of the week. A few days later came the full transcript of the notorious remarks by the president of her university, Lawrence Summers, who evidently has no shortage of theories about women and achievement. The document confirmed what Summers had reportedly said a month earlier in a closed-door session in which he gave his ideas about genetics and gender. "In the special case of science and engineering," he said, "there are issues of intrinsic aptitude." He did allow for the fact that he might be wrong. But he wasn't finished drawing new battle lines in the gender wars. He went on to speculate that women, especially when they have families, aren't willing to put in the hours necessary to get ahead. I guess he doesn't know Chloe. Because that seems to be just what his university is teaching her to do.